Walk through the streets of any major Indian city and you will see cows.
Lots and lots of cows, mostly skinny with ribs showing in fact.
But you see very little or no cow poo.
It's something you don't think about because you wouldn't really notice the lack of it, would you? But it was in Varanasi that I got the answer to the question of where all that cow dung goes.
Despite its recent spurts in development, India is a poor country and will remain so for the indefinite future.
It is a poor country in many ways but mainly it is strikingly overcrowded and so is poor in resources.
People utilize whatever they can.
I knew that one thing India was struggling with was viable fuel sources and that firewood was expensive.
So at the hotel I was staying at, I was curious and asked the waiter what they used for fuel in the kitchen.
Cow dung, sir, came the answer.
Cow dung? Yes sir, it's very hot and effective.
So I realized that when the staff went to market, one of the items on the list of things to buy was dried cow dung.
And it makes perfect sense if you think about it.
The fodder that cattle eat, along with the methane their bodies produce make for a volatile fuel product! I later learned that cow (or buffalo) dung was used in kitchens in homes all over the sub-continent, and that stockpiles of it drying in non-descript sheds were just part of that whiff of rural aroma you get all over India, in towns or metropolises.