Sacred bath

Sacred bath

India.
While in India, a visit to the Holy City of Hinduism Varanasi( present name of the old Benares) is a must.A city that can hardly cope with its own population, is virtually flooded every time of the year with thousands of worshippers from every corner of India that come to bath in the holy waters of the Ganges river. From 4.00 in the morning an inummerable and incredible crowd of men ,women,children,beggars,leppers, syphilidics,crippled,blinds but also animals as sacred cows,goats,donkeys even monkeys all of them on the direction to the river bank where they start the ritual of the Holy bath. Few meters away the burning of the deads is taking place in the open and the fumes together with the smell of the burned wood and flesh is intensely spread around.
Anybody strange to their religion and faith can only stay apart silent with respect and awe to a ritual that may also represent a philosophy of life so much different from ours...
The photo was taken with a medium format Mamiya 645 and using the unsurpassed b+w Ilford FP4 120. This photo is after digital conversion of the negative in a film scanner.