Varanasi — known through the ages as Kashi, the City of Light, and as Banaras — is widely held to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth. For Hindus it is the most sacred place of all: the city of Lord Shiva, where the holy River Ganga curves in a gentle northward arc and a stairway of more than eighty ghats descends to meet the water. To stand on these stone steps at first light, mist rising off the river and temple bells echoing across the water, is to feel time fold in on itself.
This is a city where life and death are lived openly and without fear, side by side on the same riverbank. Pilgrims bathe in the Ganga to wash away a lifetime of sins; priests chant the ancient verses they have recited for generations; widows pray, children fly kites, and at the cremation ghats the eternal cycle is honoured in plain view. Many devout Hindus believe that to die in Kashi is to attain moksha — liberation from the wheel of rebirth — and so the city carries a profound, unhurried reverence found nowhere else.
Beyond its spiritual heart, Varanasi has for centuries been a seat of Sanskrit learning, classical music and the lustrous handwoven Banarasi silk sari. Just outside the city lies Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his very first sermon, adding a second sacred thread to the region. Give yourself two unhurried days to drift the river by boat, lose yourself in the labyrinth of old lanes, and witness the spectacular evening Ganga Aarti — a city best felt, not merely seen.
