Title: Kali Baba; Aghori Cannibal of Benaras (2011)
Location: Banks of the River Ganges, Varanasi (Benaras), India.
Photographer: Tim Charody

I had heard tales about the illusive and feared cannibals of Benaras but I never imagined I would ever actually meet one, let alone go on a whisky-fuelled late-night picnic with, and spend much of the night giving drunken relationship advice to one..

But I guess Kali Baba isn't your average, stereo-typical cannibal. Yes he eats human flesh (3 human bodies apparently!), but the bodies he eats are long dead (fished personally out of the river Ganges after being dumped for religious reasons).

Not only that, but to put it simply - he is a really good bloke. In fact, in the two weeks I spent in Varanasi, he was by far the most accommodating, friendly and genuine person I came across. Happy with a cheap bottle of black-market whisky and a few rotten, half-raw chicken legs and a sign-language conversation about a Canadian girl he had fallen in love with.

I suppose the idea of going for a picnic with a cannibal seems pretty bizarre, but to be honest, it only seems weird in hindsight. What was weird was how Kali Baba kept pulling at the skin on my arm and saying the few words he knew in English; "good meat! full power!". But I guess the whisky haze kind of made me numb to any potential risks of becoming dessert.

The 33 year old Kali Baba is a part of the Aghori sect of Hinduism. A small collection of followers who mostly live along the banks of the Ganges River in, or on the outskirts of Varanasi in North Eastern India.

Easily identified by their dark robes and their human-skull bowls which they carry everywhere, the Aghori Sadhus are probably best known for their practice of fishing dead and usually decomposing human bodies out of the River Ganges. Once they have collected a body, the Aghori Sadhu will then meditate on top of it before eating some, or all of its flesh. It is one of the more bizarre and morbid practices I have heard about on my travels, but who am I to judge? They don't actually hurt anyone and many believers will tell you tales of Aghori Sahus past and present who have super-human abilities and can even see deep into the future...

One Sadhu I met in Varanasi explained to me; "If you have a pot of dirt and a beautiful flower growing out of it, which part do you value more; the flower or the dirt?", the answer is obvious, but he went on to say; "if Brahman (the creator) created both the dirt and the flower, how can we say the flower is any better, any more important than the dirt?". It is this ideology that the Aghoris base a lot of their belief system on.

Picnic with a real-life cannibal.... tick!