70/ 100 Holy Tree in Varanasi

So far I’ve written 70 little notes about our trips to India! You can read about the idea behind my project here.  Today’s picture illustrates another reason that I am really excited about revisiting this fascinating place in 2025.

In the Uttar Pradesh city of Varanasi, where there is never a dull moment, we decided to get up in the chilly darkness at 5am to go and view the town as it was awakening. At this hour the streets are somehow the same, but a different version of themselves. It seemed we were not quite early enough as we could see that there are still unfamiliar religious practices happening all around us through the smoky gloom of the last of the darkness, but at this time of the day they were different. Mercifully, being so early in the morning most were also done completely silently.

We left our apartment and walked slowly down the deserted narrow lanes we were quite familiar with by now. We emerged into the square that isn’t a square where market traders were already beginning to lay out their fruit and vegetables. The cattle and dogs were heaped up together by the embers of last night’s fire and the rubbish was piled up awaiting the sweeping women who would come along with their cart and collect it before the monkeys and goats spread it all out across the street again.

On the other side of the square was a tree that we had walked past so many times in the daylight without a second glance. Cemented onto the top of a low wall surrounding the tree here was a strangely tiled shrine of some sort but it didn’t seem to be of any significance and nobody was ever attending to it. At this time of the morning, however, it was surrounded by women who were walking slowly around the tree and shrine, quietly mumbling religious passages. They were trailing brightly coloured cotton threads, wrapping them all around the broad trunk of the tree. The threads were mostly dyed orange and yellow – colours so familiar in this area of the world where so many things are coloured with turmeric and sindoor.

I have no idea of the significance of this but I want to go back and find out. We even asked our host, who has lived in Varanasi his whole life, and he brushed it aside like it was something completely unimportant. When we visit in January I will make it my mission to learn about the significance of this tree and the threads that are so carefully woven around it each morning.