Varanasi, India – Travel Review
By Kevin Pilley, June 2025
Naked but for his “Country Cotton” Y-fronts, an old man bends down at the river’s edge, murmurs his prayers – then takes out his dentures and proceeds to rinse them thoroughly in the holy waters of the Ganges.
Beside him, their saris glued to their bodies, three women submerge themselves in the river – embracing Mother Ganga with open arms. Holding their noses, they immerse themselves five times in quick succession.
A baby girl screams as her grandmother shaves her head with a blade – offering the child’s first hair to the gods. A riverside barber, no clients yet, picks his teeth with a mangrove root.
This is Benares.
Along the banks, holy men perform their pujas – offering prasad to the scummy waters. Nearby, under a pipal tree, a goat bleats. Two dogs fight over a bone. Monkeys scavenge rice grains swept towards them by an old woman with a broom. Vultures circle overhead. Mynah birds screech from the trees. Children play marbles.
“Sacred spot”
The head masseurs and boatmen tout for work. Cross-legged on mats, professional renunciants dip fingers into brass pots and anoint the foreheads of bathers with vermilion and sandalwood paste.
Opening the third eye – for a mere rupee.
While their mothers and sisters flog clean their clothes on slabs at the waterfront, boys use a large stone as a wicket to play cricket on the ghat.
Ash-smeared babas holding begging bowls and staffs watch from the shore – surrounded by tea sellers and sugarcane juice men. A train, longer than the bridge itself, clatters over the Dufferin Bridge – bringing more pilgrims into Benares to wash away their accumulated sins at India’s most sacred spot on the world’s most sacred river.
This is Varanasi (the official and modern name for Benares) – India’s ancient city of burning and learning.
“Never stops”
A million Hindus a year come to Uttar Pradesh to purify themselves in the polluted waters flowing through Shiva the Destroyer’s city – to achieve moksha or mukti: salvation from the pain of existence and the anguish of continual rebirth and death. Die in Varanasi and your spirit will be united with the absolute – the Atman.
Eternal peace is guaranteed and enlightenment assured amidst the noisy crowds, the dust, the incense, the clamorous rickshaw bells and raw sewage.
Out on the river, avoiding the tangles of marigold petals, the lounging buffalo, the five-rupee prayer leaves, and the takeaway food tin foil cups with grubby candle wicks pressed in butter oil – tourists are rowed in “Thumbs Up”-endorsed boats to the cremation ghat, observing a respectful distance as they take photographs of the rituals. The dom, paymistress of the ghats, watches as two untouchables sieve for jewellery and gold fillings as the ashes of the departed are pushed into the water on the west bank.
Men split logs for funeral pyres. Their work never stops – and is never forsaken. Downstream, a young priest – watched by his father – offers camphor to the gods, accompanied by the bedlam of double-sided drums, cymbals, and the singing of devotional bhajans.
“Spiritual teachers”
It is 7:30 in the morning. The sun has risen over the plains and the streets are a blizzard of people. The city of the dead has come alive. The “Forest of Bliss” has woken – and the water must be worshipped.
Mark Twain described Varanasi as “older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” The holy city was the capital of the ancient janapad (kingdom) of Kashi. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities – older than Athens, Jerusalem, Beijing, and Byblos. The city of 10,000 temples has survived Thebes, Nineveh and Babylon – and it looks, smells, and feels every inch the part.
Varanasi has been the centre of Sanskritic study for over 2,500 years. The institute was founded in 1791. The novelist Prem Chand, poet Tulsidas, and musician Ravi Shankar were all born in Varanasi.
There are seven major sacred cities in India – Benares, Puri, Mathura, Ayodhya, Dwarka, Haridwar, and Kanchi. Krishna was born in Mathura, and Ram held court in Ayodhya. Vishnu’s footprint is in Haridwar – which was the hermitage seat of the sage Kapila. Puri, south of Bhubaneswar, is famous for the Jagannath Temple. Many of the great spiritual teachers are associated with Benares. Buddha gave his first sermon nearby in the deer park at Sarnath. Parshvanatha, the first master of the Jains, was born there in the eighth century.
“Crossing point”
The seven sacred rivers are represented in the streets of Varanasi. There are seven replicas of the temples of Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu. All twelve major lingas are there. Varanasi is the embodiment of heaven on earth.
Eighty-five per cent of all Indians are Hindu. They describe their own way of life as Sanatana Dharma – the eternal way or way of truth. ‘Hindu’ was first used by Arabs in the eighth century to describe those people who lived beyond the Indus River.
Every devout Hindu hopes to tread the hallowed Panchakoshi Road at least once in their life – and bathe on the same day in strict succession in the five ghats of Assi, Dashashwamedh, Adi Keshav (Varunasangam), Panchganga and, finally, the cremation ghat of Manikarnika.
Varanasi is a bridge – or tirtha – between heaven and earth; a crossing point where gods visit this world and mortals travel to the next. The town derives its name from the combination of two rivers – the Varuna and Assi. There are over eighty ghats – embankment steps stretching four miles along the left bank of the Ganges.
“Resting places”
There are also 56 recognised pilgrim circuits. The most popular is the 50-mile, five-day Panchakrosha Yatra during which pilgrims venerate 108 shrines with 108 different mantras – ending up at the Jnanavapi Kupa, or “Well of Wisdom”, between the Aurangzeb Mosque and the Golden Temple of Vishwanath – “The Lord of All”.
Dashashwamedh is the main ghat where Lord Buddha performed the Ten Horses rituals. It attracts beggars, their sores bandaged with iodine wraps, betel salesmen, perfume hawkers, pandits, sadhus, swamis, satgurus and corpses. The bodies arrive all day on bamboo stretchers and on top of taxi roofs. They are accompanied to their final resting places with the traditional mantra – “Ram, Ram, Satya Hai!” Mourning is considered bad luck by the men who attend the funeral pyre. Women are forbidden.
The eldest son, head shaven, walks around the fire and sets it alight. It takes three hours to burn a body. Four hundred are cremated each day. The size and type of conflagration depends on your wealth. An average cremation costs 18,000 rupees. Male corpses are swaddled in white, young women in red, and old people in gold.
“Devotions”
There are prescribed burning areas for the police and army, businesspeople, and members of higher castes. Pregnant women, babies, children under twelve, and victims of leprosy or smallpox are rowed into the river and thrown in with a stone tied to them. The river was stocked with turtles to feed on the human remains.
The place became the burning ghat because of its proximity to the sacred pools of Manikarnikakhund – dug by Vishnu with his discus. Shiva was so impressed by his devotions that he dropped jewelled earrings into the pool. The Tarakeshvara Temple houses the form of Shiva who whispers into the ear of the dead. The other burning ghat is located upstream at Harishchandra.
Brahma, the Supreme Creator – and Vishnu, the Great Preserver – are both present in Varanasi. They are celebrated at festivals like Dipavali (the row of lights) in October and Ganga Dussehra – the river Ganga’s official birthday.
The area is also a place of pilgrimage for Buddhists. Ten kilometres from Varanasi is Sarnath. Here, robed Tibetans and Nepali villagers, women with babies tied to their backs, chant “Om Mani Padme Hum” – spinning hand-held prayer wheels and lighting tapers to stick on the stupa. Prostration is everywhere.
At Sarnath, they revere Buddha under a cutting from the tree under which he sat. The original tree died; its replacement is not that old. The Bodhi tree is the closest pilgrims can come to Buddha’s presence after his birthplace of Lumbini, Kushinagar and Bodh Gaya – which still has the sandstone slab Vajrasila on which he sat in meditation.
“Attracts the faithful”
One hour away by car – and three days by boat – is Allahabad, where, in 1989, 18 million people bathed at the sangam or river confluence as part of the Kumbh Mela. The mass bathing goes back to the 2nd century BC and is shared by Allahabad with Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nasik.
The origins lie in the mythic battle between gods and demons for a pitcher (kumbh) containing the nectar of immortality. In the struggle, four drops fell to earth – at these four cities. The festival celebrates the gods’ victory. The sadhus have priority in the bathing and arrive atop elephants – led by brass bands.
The Ganges attracts the faithful. One person dies of diarrhoea every minute in the Gangetic area. Tapeworm, typhoid, cholera, and viral hepatitis are rife.
But still it is the place to seek salvation – to practise austerities – and to taste immortality.
Pilgrims come to Benares to press their palms together and give the traditional Namaskār greeting.
To salute the divine in everything.
India’s Golden Triangle and Varanasi:
11 nights
From £2,575 per person
Flying with Virgin Atlantic from London Heathrow
Based on selected departures in September 2025
Prices based on two people sharing
Itinerary (as shown on the website):
2 nights at Haveli Dharampura (Delhi), 2 nights at Samode Haveli (Jaipur), 1 night at Ekaa Villa (Agra), 2 nights at Saraca (Lucknow), 2 nights at Brijrama Palace (Varanasi), 2 nights at Taj Mahal Palace Hotel (Mumbai). All on a room & breakfast basis.
kuoni.co.uk
Includes:
International flights and transfers, personal chauffeur guide and vehicle, 2 experiences (Death & Rebirth Night Walk in Varanasi, Meet the Nawab of Lucknow), train ticket from Lucknow to Varanasi, domestic flight (Varanasi to Mumbai).
Excludes:
Sightseeing and activities not stated above (a selection of optional experiences can be added to this itinerary, or you can explore by yourself with your personal chauffeur guide).
Kevin Pilley is a former professional cricketer and the ex-chief staff writer of PUNCH magazine. His humour, travel, lifestyle and food & drink work appears worldwide. He has been published by over 600 titles. Allegedly.
