Once inside [the Golden Temple], we are looking for the Well of the Knowledge of Salvation. It hasn’t changed for many a year, and certainly not since Twain’s visit:

An uncannily accurate description of what one finds there now with one, overwhelming exception: monkeys—and yet more monkeys, hundreds of them, squabbling, stealing, frightening and out of control numerically and behaviorally. If one finds the Venetian pigeons are ruining St. Mark’s Square the same can be said of the Indian monkeys in the Golden Temple.

We must be nearing our second stop, in theory Benares’ most famous site, the Golden Temple.

“Why are we starting here?” I ask. [This is actually Mark Twain's eleventh point on his itinerary for a pilgrim]

“Because this temple, Sakhi Binayak, is dedicated to the god Ganesha, the god of prosperity and good luck, so every new venture starts with a visit to Ganesha. We are touring the temples, that’s a new venture, so we should start here. Everyone can worship Ganesha and everyone does.”

I look at my notes and say, “Mark Twain came here to have his redemption recorded after the 44-mile pilgrimage he didn’t—and we won’t—be making. Could that be right?”

The winter waters here were recently Himalayan snow and the chilliness is only to be expected; not so the state of the Ganges. The pollution is now causing concern to even the most convinced Hindu.

Elsewhere in Benares too Twain found that “There are plenty of monkeys about the place. Being sacred, they make themselves very free, and scramble around wherever they please.” Again true, but now much more so. Most animals we humans meet day to day are afraid of us. Not the Indian monkey; as they have become more and more numerous and confident they can see we are more afraid of them than they of us. They must think we are just another breed of monkey—and let’s face it we must look as much like monkeys to them as they do to us—some of us more so than others.

From Ian Strathcarron's "The Indian Equator":

In fact, none of the idols in Benares are handsome or attractive. And what a swarm of them there is! The town is a vast museum of idols—and all of them crude, misshapen, and ugly. They flock through one's dreams at night, a wild mob of nightmares. When you get tired of them in the temples and take a trip on the river, you find idol giants, flashily painted, stretched out side by side on the shore. And apparently wherever there is room for one more lingam, a lingam is there. If Vishnu had foreseen what his town was going to be, he would have called it Idolville or Lingamburg.

They do not burn fakeers—those revered mendicants. They are so holy that they can get to their place without that sacrament, provided they be consigned to the consecrating river. We saw one carried to mid-stream and thrown overboard. He was sandwiched between two great slabs of stone.

We made the usual trip up and down the river, seated in chairs under an awning on the deck of the usual commodious hand-propelled ark; made it two or three times, and could have made it with increasing interest and enjoyment many times more; for, of course, the palaces and temples would grow more and more beautiful every time one saw them, for that happens with all such things; also, I think one would not get tired of the bathers, nor their costumes, nor of their ingenuities in getting out of them and into them again without exposing too much bronze, nor of their devotional gesticulations a