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Varanasi
Hinduism's holiest city, where life and death meet on the steps of the Ganges
Few places on Earth hold daily life and death in such close view. On the western bank of the Ganges, Varanasi greets the sunrise with bathers, bells, and chanting, while funeral pyres burn day and night a short walk downstream. Hindus regard it as the city of Shiva and one of the seven sacred cities of India, and many believe that to die here, or to have one's ashes given to the river here, brings moksha, release from the cycle of rebirth. It is also among the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, a center of Sanskrit learning, silk weaving, and Hindustani music, and the place where Buddhists believe the Buddha gave his first sermon, at nearby Sarnath.
The city faces east across a broad bend of the Ganges, so its riverfront catches the first light. Along roughly six kilometers of bank runs a wall of at least 84 ghats, stone stairways descending to the water, backed by palaces, temples, and rest houses built mostly by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century patrons. Dashashwamedh Ghat hosts the nightly Ganga aarti, when priests swing tiered brass lamps in unison before crowds on the steps and in boats. At Manikarnika and Harishchandra ghats, cremations continue around the clock. Behind the river lies a maze of lanes too narrow for cars, leading to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, its spire covered in gold, now linked to the river by a broad corridor that opened in December 2021.
Settled since at least the early first millennium BCE, the city was capital of the ancient kingdom of Kashi and drew sages, pilgrims, and scholars for centuries. Its temples were destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly. The present Kashi Vishwanath Temple was built in 1780 under Queen Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore, and the Gyanvapi Mosque beside it is the subject of a long-running court dispute between Hindu petitioners and the mosque's managing committee. Visitor numbers have soared: Uttar Pradesh tourism officials counted about 110 million visits in 2024. That pressure, along with river pollution and the heavy smoke of cremation grounds, shapes debates over cleanup programs, crowd management, and how much of the old riverfront to rebuild.