You’re offered a drink in India… which is the living embodiment of a God. What do you do?

I’m standing on the terrace of a hotel in Varanasi, overlooking the Ganges. Dawn is warming the weathered stones of the ghats, and people are bathing at the edge of the river. Listening to the comforting clatter of tables being set for breakfast, I watch the scene below.

100 yards away, down a flight of steps, an older man stands by himself near the riverbank. His calves are hidden in the water. He leans forward to cup water from the Ganges and pours it slowly over his head.

For a couple of days, I’ve been wandering the banks of the Ganges, watching people interact with the river: boating, bathing, washing clothes. But this is different: there’s a deliberate slowness and intensity to the man’s actions. What am I seeing? It’s as if there’s a question mark hanging in the dawn light.

Since checking me in a few days earlier, the manager of the hotel has kindly been answering my questions on Varanasi, Hindu belief and food. Each time I’ve come back to the hotel, he asks: “What have you seen?”

Varanasi is supposedly the oldest continually-inhabited space in India: Buddha taught here in 520 BC. I’ve come here because Vivek Singh sent me here. Chatting in the Cinamon Club before my trip, the celebrity chef asked me what I was looking for in India.

“Intensity,” I said.

“Go to Varanasi.”

He was right. Varanasi turns every dial up to 11.

Within minutes of arriving, I found myself being led to the ghats – and plonked on a stone seat on the banks of the Ganges to watch a human cremation… less than ten feet away. As we watched the ceremony, ashes and bones from previous cremations were scattered in the river.

In terms of Hindu legend, Varanasi’s physical location is on the spike of Lord Shiva’s trident. As eternal home to Lord Shiva the Destroyer, the city is one of the most sacred spaces in India – and Hindus believe that dying here leads to immediate liberation from the cycle of birth and death. The energy is tangible in everything you experience in the city.

So, as I watch the man pour Ganges water over his body, the hotel manager’s question hangs in the air:  WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Gradually, I connect the everyday scene in front of me with everything I’ve read about the holiest river in India.

The realisation feels almost physical: as if my head is the eye of a needle, being threaded with knowledge.

The man isn’t bathing in the river Ganges, he’s communing with a Goddess.

I’m face-to-face with the Ganga: living Goddess of purification, mother of humanity. I’m watching a human being immerse themself in a divinity.

“I’m watching a human being immerse themself in a divinity.”

For the residents of Varanasi, and for the millions of pilgrims who visit, these truths are self-evident.

I’ve been shown a door to a different world.

Fast-forward a decade, and I’m in a hotel in South India. We’ve chosen to stay in Areca County in Honnavar, Karnataka, because it specialises in local-sourced, home-cooked vegetarian food. The website promises the Areca County will be: ‘a treat for both the palate and the soul’.

They keep their word.

With a group of cottages dotted around a traditional wooden home – inside a private plantation – the hotel is one of the most memorable places I’ve stayed in in India. The cottages have immense ceilings (four to five metres high) with walls carved from slabs of red, local stone. In the main building, you eat under century-old timbers. It’s an intensely soulful place.

The cottages have immense ceilings, with walls carved from slabs of red, local stone. In the main building, you eat under century-old timbers. It’s an intensely soulful place.

The ‘palate and soul’ adventure starts as soon as I meet the chef, Neelakanta.

He explains that his name (‘neela’ and ‘kanta’) is Tamil for ‘blue’ and ‘throat’. He tells the story of how Lord Shiva drank poison to protect the universe from its own destructive power, and stored that poison in his throat, turning it blue.

So, Neelakanta’s name evokes the body of Lord Shiva. Have I ever had a ‘welcome chat’ as deep as this with any other chef?

The villa’s grounds are home to all kinds of ayurvedic plants. Neelakanta takes me for a tour, and we stop in front of a tree – about four metres tall, with a slender trunk, the width of a rugby post.

This is a Bel Patra or Wood Apple: named after the baseball-sized fruit wrapped in a rigid, wooden shell. Neelakanta explains that, from the bark to the roots, every part of the tree has a different healing property. The fruit aids digestion; the juice cools the body in summer.

But right now, it’s the leaves we’re interested in. With their distinctive ‘trifoliate’ shape, the leaves are said to represent the three eyes of Lord Shiva.

Neelakanta picks a leaf and gives it to me, saying they are used as a temple-offering to Lord Shiva. Even at arm’s length, the leaf has an intense smell of camphor. And because Jeff Bezos has thought of everything, you can buy packs of fresh Bel Patra leaves in the UK on Amazon.

But things are going to get much deeper.

Neelakanta explains the tree is not just sacred to Lord Shiva – the tree is Lord Shiva.

As the Ganga is a living Goddess, so the Bel Patra is a living personification of Lord Shiva.

It’s an intense moment. A man named after Shiva’s body is telling me the leaf I’m holding is Lord Shiva himself.

Neelakanta explains the tree is not just sacred to Lord Shiva… the tree is Lord Shiva.

It takes a bit of processing. We go back to the main building for dinner.

At the next table, Vijeta and other guests are celebrating a birthday. After the meal, she and her husband invite me to share cake with them around a campfire. As he leaves the villa, Neelakanta offers to bring me a drink of Bel Patra the next day.

As the drink appears in the dining room at breakfast, it causes a stir.

Served in a tall glass, it’s a shade of the Day-Glo colouring of the raw Bel Patra leaves. The drink is made from coconut water, buttermilk and Bel Patra leaves – but the aroma of camphor grabs you even while the glass is still on the tray.

“I’m Indian,” says Vijeta, “and I’ve never seen Bel Patra served as a drink.”

So, we’re in special territory. And, as so often in India, there’s a sense of multiple truths. For some people, the liquid in front of us is the embodiment of a God; for others, it’s an ayurvedic medicine; for others still, it’s just a drink.

The Indian genius, I think, is to respect each truth.

The drink sits on the tray. Do I sit on the bank, or immerse myself? Several of us take a sip.

No one speaks. Even softened by coconut water and buttermilk, the taste of camphor takes your breath away.

What did my experience of Bel Patra give me?

Is there another country that can transform a river, or a leaf… into a God… before your eyes?

I take another sip. Again, I feel as if a delicate thread of insight is being slipped into my head.

… is there another country that can transform a river, or a leaf… into a God… before your eyes?

… is there another country where you can experience millennia of religion, medicine and cuisine… in one mouthful?

That’s a lot to learn from one drink.

THANKS

My sincere thanks to Areca County and Neelakanta – for approving this piece, and for making this blog possible.

Photo credits: Lord Shiva – Reyney Poojary, Pexels; Man in Ganges – Ashish Kumar Pandey, Pexels