The three from the beach.

Nepp, tugs, tourist trap: In order to rip off passengers in front on the road to protect, is in Varanasi, India, the Aliens Police in action. Their Autoriät, however, is limited.

 

Varanasi - Mr. Pandeys day begins with work. The 47-year-old officer, slender, gray mustache, removes the shirt in navy blue trousers of his uniform way, then it rises toward the stairs down the Ganges. Before him, a celebration. Hundreds of people crowded in the holy river, wash their sins. Morning at six, there is religious rush-hour in Varanasi.

Knee deep, the men and women in the ongoing water that are so brown is like a stale puddle site. Cans with brass scoop it over their heads, say prayers in the process of dive. Bell sound, smell incense. Yonder, on the other side the river, the sun slowly goes on - even two hours, then again sultry 38 degrees.

Before the Hindus have every morning as dozens of boats positioned. On board are backpacking and flat-travelers from the West, the digital cameras around the neck. Varanasi, the ancient city on the banks of the holy "Mother Ganga", is a pilgrimage for Hindu pilgrims and tourists. 3.6 million visitors, mostly Indians, but also many Europeans who came in 2007.

Such a crowd enjoys not only the hotel and restaurant operators, but has also led to a thriving street vendors and customers tug scene led. In travel guides will be aggressive "ripoff" and false "Guides" warned the new visitors have been told that the reserved hotel was burned down, but thank God would know better. As in most mass-tourist destinations promised in Varanasi, especially money and are therefore under siege - and that means working for Mr Pandey.

Am Ghat siege

Pandey is an official at the tourist police, a kind of alien workers in uniform. With two colleagues, he is here on the rocky shore promenade, the so-called Ghats, stationed. Your guard, a metal with lattice windows, is at the most accessed swimming pool, the Dashaswamedh Ghat, foreigners simply called Main Ghat. Mr Pandey is now doing his daily patrol.

A group of young Indians have a pair in Khakihosen surrounding the design of their backpacks in front of the abdomen geschnallt have. The Indians want either postcards, boat rides, haircuts, or Ohrreinigungen sell Pandey flushed them away. "The dealers are a major problem," he says, "they beset the foreign tourists. We are here to help."

Take as many tourists in their help? "No, rather not, most do not know that we exist." Pandey and his colleagues have their own cases, most are looking for. Their most exciting application yet? "Last year, a Frenchwoman in photography fell into the water," says Pandey.

Cremation as a tourist magnet

The smoke of burnt wood sticks in the nose, eyes tearful: On Burning Ghat, the dead publicly feuerbestattet - for Europeans, mostly in the deaths funeral firms have outsourced, an unfamiliar sight. If you burn leaves in Varanasi, according to Hindu belief breaks the cycle of rebirth. During the hot summer months, when many old people die, are up to 300 deaths a day buried.

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Eight pyre today are built near the river. On some you can in orange scarves encased suspect dead, others are up to the burnt soil. The ash is then in the Ganges geschüttet. On the stone steps above the crematorium sitting members, among them tourists.

Photography is not allowed here, but a self "Guide" offers a guide to make at the end of which is a balcony of a photo shoot is expected. Heilig, Pandey says, many here had only the money and runs forward in the direction of Old Town.

In the narrow streets, many people insist. Right and left in the open dealer stores sell vegetables, souvenirs, and in wound chewing leaves. A motorcyclist honks at the door, a cow kotet, it smells sour after foul garbage. Varanasi is not only a sacred center, but also a true mud hole - and with its hundreds of ways a maze.

"We need more power"

Then - finally - a new case. A blonde passenger, mid-20s, trekking sandals, is busy from a jewelry dealer prosecuted. Pandey intervenes. The jewelry dealer looks briefly puzzled, then he continued his sales pitch.

"We need more power," says Pandey at go. The tourist police in Varanasi has about as much to say as a private security guard in Germany: namely, nothing. Pandey and his colleagues, all retired soldiers, are not the police, but the tourism authorities of their subordinates. Pronounce sentences, they may not. The total of 23 employees, who since 2002 in Varanasi on patrol, have neither cars nor radios. "Together, we can only talk about our private phones," says Pandey.

At the entrance of the Golden Vishwanath temple sit a dozen policemen, their guns to the wall. Since a series of bomb in 2006 in which more than 20 people died, were the security arrangements in Varanasi reinforced, since the
Mumbai terror attacks on the case. "We tend to lost backpacks or help foreign tourists during the orientation," says Pandey. With the police only if they had something to do when tourists had stolen something. "We then teach. Most Indian police do not speak English."

After half an hour in the streets of chaos is the old town back to the Main Ghat. That's it - Pandey saunters back to his two colleagues who were on plastic chairs in the shade of a silohohen water tanks have taken place. What they are now the rest of the day will make? "Here, wait. If we leave, but no one finds us."

But who should they find it if nobody knows? Yes, that was probably a problem, says Pandey.