Ken waited for breakfast so he could take his eye medication with food. The eye wasn't any better so far. After that we showered and relaxed a bit. Then went down to get a boat ride. We looked for a guy we'd talked to the night before but couldn't find him, so we picked a different one.

We got into a rowboat and the boatman rowed us along downstream toward the main cremation ghat looking at the bathers along the way.

Several times kids in smaller rowboats approached our boat and tried to sell us little packs of noodles, which people buy so they can throw to the seagulls. Our boatman took a pack to demonstrate and we were immediately inundated with seagulls. We told him we don't like birds.

As we approached the Manikarnika Ghat where most of the cremations take place, the boatman said it was okay to take pictures from a distance.
 

   
As we got closer he told us when it was time to put the cameras away. The boatman tied up against a large boat that was parked in front of the ghat and we watched the goings on from there.

The cow that we'd seen the day before was still there in the same spot but was now dead. Just then a group of men gathered around the cow and started dragging it into the river. 
 
Then a few of them got in a row boat and we thought they would use it to tow the cow out into the river, but instead they just rowed off. (Later, on our way back in the rowboat we saw them at another ghat, struggling to load a large stone block into their rowboat. The block appeared to be one of the steps from the ghat, which pissed Ken off...stealing an historic artifact just to sink a dead cow!)

We returned our attention to the cremations:

Half-dozen or more cremation fires in progress.

Men carrying logs down the hill from the giant piles above the ghat and setting up new pyres.

Male family members bringing the bodies down to the river one by one on stretchers decorated with orange cloth and flowers and submerging them in the Ganges before carrying them back up the steps to the waiting pyre

Men cleaning up the leftovers from the funerals, Collecting the cloth and the bamboo stretchers (which don't go on the fire) out of the debris piles.

Cattle foraging amongst the burning pyres eating the strings of flowers.

Man panning for gold in the river next to a big pile of wood and human ash on the shoreline. I guess any jewelry, gold teeth, etc are recovered this way.

Our time was almost up, so the boatman took us back up the river to where we'd started.
 
Then we had an argument with his boss about the price, which we thought was going to be 100 rupees per person but was now 150 rupees. Neither of us could recall for certain what the price had been so we caved and payed him the extra.

About this time Ken had another sudden increase in floaters in his vision.

We wanted to see what they were doing with the cow, so we walked all the way back to the cremation ghat on foot to see. Along the way we passed an old man laying on one of the ghats with his knees spread wide and his junk on display for all to see. (Photo not available.) By the time we got back to the cremation ghat the cow was gone. Presumably taken to the bottom of the river by the large stone step.

There was a clearly visible lower leg and foot sticking out of one of the fires. As the fire burned the leg bone became visible, and the foot started to blacken but didn't burn. After a surprisingly short time (maybe 15 minutes) the leg burned through and the foot fell out of the fire onto the ground next to the pyre. The men tending the file used a stick to lift the foot back into the fire.

The sun came out for the first time since we'd been in Varanasi and it started to get hot. We started walking back toward the hotel, again passing many an interesting sight.
 

Back at the ghat in front of the hotel we ran into the boatman we'd been looking for this morning. We asked him if he could take us across the river to the sandbar on the other side, as there was a lot of people on the far shore and boats running back and forth across the river. We agreed to a price and then went up to the room quick for a bathroom break and to get our hats.
 
We met our new boatman at the ghat and he showed us to a rowboat. Just then, our previous boatman - who happened to have been bathing at this ghat, saw us an came over yelling. An argument ensued between them about which of them had dibs on us. Apparently there is a rule among the boatmen that once they snag a tourist they 'own' them and all the other boatmen are supposed to back off. Though we couldn't understand exactly what was said, from the body language it seemed that our new boatman better watch his back when he gets back from taking us across the river.

Then the ride began. We worked our way upstream slowly for a bit, and then turned and headed across the river. Ken even got to row for a bit.
 
On far shore we had to take off our shoes and roll up our pants to wade to shore. The water was only a foot deep and the bottom was solid, but there was a 6 inch layer of slimy slippery muck on the bottom.
 
We walked around on the edge of the giant sand bar for a bit looking at the boats and the bathers and the water buffalo. There was a lot of garbage scattered around and quite a few wild dogs which survive by eating the garbage and the animal and human remains that wash up on the shore.
 

Then rowed back across the Ganges to the ghats.
 
On the way back Ken had another sudden surge of new floaters. It seemed like he was bleeding inside his eye.

We went to the Banana Lassi place again for (you guessed it) a couple of lassis.
 
Ken's vision was definitely getting worse and we decided we'd better line up an eye doctor appointment for when we got back to Delhi.

We went back to the hotel and did some searching on line to figure out where we should go. Then called the Shroff Eye Centre and tried to book an appointment. The appointment desk had already closed by this time, but we were told they would call us back between 8 and 9 am tomorrow morning. So hopefully we'll have our appointment set up before we fly back to Delhi tomorrow afternoon.

After that we went for super at a nearby restaurant called Spicy Bites. Then back to the room to update the travel blog and went to bed early.