We tried to go to the Golden Temple. We found it. Our gate and everything, unfortunately all of India was going to the temple as well, and the wait looked to be forever. We hung out at The Kautilya Society, talked about our future movie careers in Mumbai, and towards dusk, we headed out to The Ganges again for one last night experience (music festival included!) along the river.
The same river ritual that we saw the other night was being performed at different ghats. Instead of sitting through only one this time, we walked from ghat to ghat and eventually found ourselves at the music festival friends at The Kautilya Society mentioned seeing. We watched for a bit from outside the gated river front area and then we walked some more. We walked past rituals, and crowds, and then we neared one of the burning ghats.
The burning ghats are designated areas for honorable cremations along the riverside. -for men. I would like to specify here that we only saw men in the area, and later found out only men are cremated here, unless the woman happens to very (VERY) high up on the caste system. We kept our distance, even though an Indian bystander assured us we could go closer. The only photos I took were of some tall unlit bamboo lanters that we were told burned for the person who passed away. Unfortunately(?) none of them were lit when we were there. It felt a bit creepy at night. We had to walk away from the blaring music festival and over lots of mud (we hoped) that had washed up or had been deposited on the walkway. The electricty was out around this specific ghat, so the only light eminated from burning timbers (and bodies) that I counted were six going at one time. We didn't stay long.
When we walked back along the river, and past the music festival, we were ushered into the front entrance and told to take a seat at one of the white plastic chairs near the front. We didn't make it for the famed sitarist, but listened to the vocalist for a little bit before heading back to The Kautilya Society as we had to wake up quite early for our sunrise cruise on the river in the morning.