Three days in Varanasi: the city that has never tried to be pleasant

Two nights on the ghats, a boat before sunrise and an aarti after dark. Difficult, filthy, and the most extraordinary place in India.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Varanasi
Places
7 across 3 days
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Varanasi is one of the oldest continuously lived-in cities on earth and it does not present itself for visitors. The lanes are a metre wide, the cows are not moving, the river is dirty, and somebody is being cremated a hundred metres from where somebody else is doing laundry.

It is also the single most concentrated place in India. Hindus believe that dying here breaks the cycle of rebirth, so people come to do exactly that, and the whole city is organised around the fact. Nothing about it is staged for you, which is what makes it worth the discomfort.

Two nights is the standard and it is enough for one sunrise on the water, one evening ceremony and one full day. Some people leave after a day and some stay a month. Very few are indifferent.

Highlights

  • A rowing boat on the Ganges at first light, with the whole city waking on the steps
  • The evening fire ceremony at the main ghat, which has run every night for decades
  • The cremation ground, watched from a respectful distance and with the camera away
  • A Shiva shrine at the middle of the old city, pulled down three times and rebuilt every time
  • A maharaja's fort across the river, with a museum nobody has updated since 1960

Where to stay

Varanasi, two nights

The city runs along the west bank of the Ganges for about six kilometres, and the entire visitable part of it is the strip between the river and the first main road: eighty-odd ghats, a maze of lanes behind them, and the great temple somewhere in the middle.

The east bank is empty sand, deliberately. Nobody builds there, so every sunrise comes up over nothing and hits the whole city at once.

Two nights, three days, and a great deal of walking on wet stone. Bring shoes you can get on and off quickly, because you will be taking them off all day.

Day by day

Day 1 in Varanasi

The ghats from south to north, and fire after dark

Varanasi's airport is about forty-five minutes northwest of the old city and the main railway junction is closer. Either way you will be dropped at the edge of the lanes and walk in.

Get your bearings on the water rather than in the streets, and do it by walking the ghats northwards. Start at the southern end, where the steps are wide, the crowd is students and long-stayers, and there is a morning ceremony at dawn if you are up for it.

From there the walkway runs north past bathing ghats, laundry ghats, wrestling pits, buffalo, kite fliers and several thousand people doing entirely ordinary things in a place that is not.

Be at the main ghat well before sunset. Every evening seven priests perform the fire ceremony to the river on tiered platforms, with brass lamps, bells, conch shells and a very large crowd, and it runs about forty-five minutes. Take a place on the steps early or hire a boat and watch from the water, which is better and costs a few hundred rupees.

  1. 16:00

    Assi Ghat

    Other

    The southernmost of the main ghats and the easiest place to start. Cafes, a peepal tree, a morning aarti at sunrise, and enough space to sit without being in anybody's way.

  2. 18:00

    Dashashwamedh Ghat

    Other

    The main ghat, and the site of the evening ceremony. Arrive an hour early for a seat on the steps, or negotiate a boat and watch from thirty metres out with the lamps reflecting off the water.

With more time: The lanes behind the ghats are the other half of the city and impossible to navigate deliberately. Get lost in them for an hour before dinner: silk shops, sweet shops, shrines the size of a cupboard, and a cow in every third doorway.

Day 2 in Varanasi

Sunrise on the water, the burning ghat, and a fort across the river

Be on a boat by half past five. The rowing boats leave from any ghat, cost a few hundred rupees for an hour or two, and the point is the light: the sun comes up over the empty east bank straight onto the whole west-facing city, and the steps below you fill with people bathing, praying, washing clothes and doing yoga.

The boat will pass the main cremation ground. Look, do not photograph, and do not get off there with anybody who offers. Bodies are burned in the open here around the clock and have been for centuries, and the woodpiles stacked up the bank are the reason the whole hillside is black.

Later, the great Shiva temple. It is one of the twelve holiest shrines in the country, it has been destroyed and rebuilt at least three times, and a mosque built under Aurangzeb stands directly beside it, which is a live and heavily policed dispute. Phones are not allowed anywhere near the inner complex, there is airport-grade security, and non-Hindu visitors need a passport.

In the afternoon, cross the river to the fort the maharajas of Banaras built in 1750. Getting there is half of it: a pontoon bridge in the dry months, a boat otherwise.

  1. 05:30

    Dawn boat on the Ganges

    Travel

    Ninety minutes in a rowing boat, from about half past five. Agree the price and the route before you get in, and take a rower rather than a motor: the engines drown out the only thing worth listening to.

  2. 07:00

    Manikarnika Ghat

    Other

    The main cremation ghat, burning day and night. Watch from the water or from the steps at a distance, keep quiet, and put the camera in your bag before you get anywhere near it.

  3. 10:00

    Kashi Vishwanath Temple

    Religious

    One of the twelve jyotirlingas, at the heart of the old city and rebuilt after repeated destruction. Leave your phone at the hotel, allow an hour for the queue and the security, and carry a passport.

  4. 15:00

    Ramnagar Fort

    Other

    Built in 1750 in Mughal style on the east bank, and still the residence of the former royal family. The museum inside has vintage cars, palanquins, weapons and an astronomical clock, all of it dusty and none of it labelled well.

With more time: If the temple queue looks impossible, the alternative is the Hanuman temple in the south of the city, which is calm, green, full of monkeys and holds a music festival every April that is one of the best in north India.

Day 3 in Varanasi

A Nepali pagoda, a rooftop over the river, and out

One more morning on the ghats, starting early because everything here does.

Halfway along the riverfront, up a lane from the water, is a small temple built by an exiled king of Nepal in the nineteenth century, in Kathmandu pagoda style with dark carved timber that looks entirely wrong for the Gangetic plain and is all the better for it.

Further north, on the bluff above the ghat where five streams are said to join, stands a mosque with an unbeatable view over the bend of the river and the whole line of the city. Getting up to it takes some asking and a few rupees, and it is the best last look at Varanasi there is.

Then the airport, or the station, and a strong desire either to come straight back or never to return.

  1. 07:30

    Nepali Hindu Temple

    Religious

    A small gold-roofed temple in Nepali pagoda style, built by a nineteenth-century exiled king, with carved wooden struts that reward five minutes of looking up.

  2. 09:00

    Alamagir Mosque

    Visit

    A mosque on the bluff at the northern end of the ghats, with the best elevated view of the riverfront in the city. Ask at the entrance and expect to pay a small amount to whoever takes you up.

  3. 10:30

    Breakfast on a rooftop

    Eat

    Kachori sabzi and a clay cup of chai, which is how Varanasi eats before nine. Follow it with a lassi in a terracotta pot from one of the old shops in the lanes.

With more time: With a few hours before the train, the silk weaving workshops in the Muslim quarter of Madanpura take visitors and are the real thing rather than the showrooms the rickshaw drivers will take you to. Ask your guesthouse to point you at one.

Before you go

When to go

October to March. November and February are the best of it. December and January are cold, foggy and can play havoc with flights and trains, and the fog on the river at dawn is either magical or the reason you saw nothing, depending on the morning.

April to June is brutally hot on the open steps. The monsoon raises the river enough to submerge the lower ghats entirely, which stops the boats and closes the walkway between them.

Getting around, and where to stay

Stay in the old city, on or just behind the ghats, and accept that no vehicle can reach the door. You will walk the last few hundred metres through lanes with a porter or with your own bag, and it is worth it: being able to step out onto the river at five in the morning is the whole point.

Assi Ghat at the southern end is calmer and more popular with long-stayers. The stretch around the main ghat is louder, closer to everything, and harder work.

The two rules

No photography at the cremation grounds. Not discreetly, not from a boat, not with a long lens. Families are cremating their dead a few metres from you.

Related: the men who approach you at the burning ghats offering to show you around, explain the ritual or take you to a viewing balcony are running a scam that ends in an aggressive demand for money for wood for the poor. It is well organised and persistent. Do not follow anybody anywhere, and do not accept a guide you did not seek out.

Sarnath, if you have a fourth day

Ten kilometres north is the deer park where the Buddha gave his first sermon after enlightenment, now a quiet site of ruined monasteries around a huge fourth-century stupa. After Varanasi the calm is startling.

The museum there holds the Ashokan lion capital that India took as its national emblem, which is on every banknote and passport in the country. It is closed on Fridays. Half a day, and worth planning around.

Nothing here has been arranged for visitors and nothing will be explained to you unless you ask. That is the deal. In exchange you get a city doing exactly what it has done for two thousand years, at six in the morning, with the light coming across the water.

Three days is enough to stop flinching at it. That is when it gets interesting.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is three days enough for Varanasi?
Yes. Two nights covers a dawn boat, an evening ceremony, the main temple and a full day, and most people find that intense enough. A third night is worth it only if you want Sarnath as well.
Can I photograph the cremations?
No. Not from the steps, not from a boat, not from a balcony somebody offers you. It is a funeral. The camera is also the hook for the commonest scam in the city.
Can non-Hindus enter Kashi Vishwanath?
Yes, currently, with a passport for identification. Phones and bags are not allowed anywhere near the inner complex, security is airport-grade, and the queue can be long. Go early.
Is the river safe to be on or in?
On, yes. In, no. The water quality is poor by any measure and the fact that pilgrims bathe in it is a matter of faith rather than chemistry. Do not swallow anything, and wash your hands before eating.
How do I deal with the touts?
Say no once, clearly, and keep walking. The persistent ones cluster at the burning ghats and around the main temple. Book boats through your guesthouse rather than on the steps, agree every price before it starts, and never follow anybody down a lane.
Is it a good first stop in India?
It is not. Varanasi is easier to take once you have adjusted to the country, and much harder as your first morning off a long-haul flight. Delhi or Rajasthan first, then here.
Can I change this plan?
Yes. Copy it and rearrange. The two fixed points are the dawn boat and the evening ceremony, which happen at set times and cannot be swapped for each other.