Following the Ghats: A Walk Along Varanasi's River Steps

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There is only one sensible way to see Varanasi, and it is on foot, southward to northward, along the water. The city's western bank is a continuous stone stair several kilometres long, broken into named flights called ghats, and walking it from end to end takes most of a morning if you do not stop, which you will. The far bank is empty sand. The near bank is a wall of temples, palaces, guesthouses and burning grounds stacked above the steps, and everything the city does, it does on them.

Two facts of geography explain the layout. Varanasi sits on the outside of a crescent bend, so the built bank is high and firm while the opposite side is a flood deposited sandbank that cannot be built on. And at this bend the Ganges runs briefly northward, back towards its source, which pilgrims read as auspicious and which is a large part of why the city is where it is. The ghats are conventionally counted as eighty four, a number that is symbolic rather than a tally, echoing the traditional count of forms of life through which a soul passes.

Who Built Them

The stone is newer than the sanctity. Most of the ghats as they now stand were built or rebuilt during the eighteenth century, largely under Maratha patronage, with the Peshwas, the Holkars of Indore, the Scindias of Gwalior and the Bhonsles all funding stretches, alongside the Maharajas of Benares and rulers from Rajasthan.

Ahilyabai Holkar is the name that recurs. She built the ghat that carries her name and, in 1780, rebuilt the Kashi Vishwanath temple on a site adjacent to the one Aurangzeb had demolished in 1669, where the Gyanvapi mosque had been built. Man Mandir Ghat carries the riverfront palace built by Jai Singh II of Amber, on the roof of which stands one of his masonry astronomical observatories, its instruments still readable. Scindia Ghat, built under Baizabai Scindia of Gwalior, is instantly recognisable because a Shiva temple at its edge tilts into the water, said to have sunk under the weight of the construction above it.

The Walk

Start at Assi Ghat at the southern end, where a small stream meets the river. It is the least congested and the most social: morning yoga groups, boat touts, students from Banaras Hindu University, and a sunrise programme of music and recitation that has run for years. Immediately north is Tulsi Ghat, named for the poet Tulsidas, who by tradition composed the Ramcharitmanas in the city in the sixteenth century.

A little further is Harishchandra Ghat, the smaller of the city's two cremation grounds, now with an electric crematorium alongside the wood pyres. Then Kedar Ghat, its steps striped in red and white, with the Kedareshwar temple above and a bathing tank beside it, long favoured by the city's Bengali and South Indian residents.

Dashashwamedh is the centre of gravity. Its name refers to a legendary sacrifice of ten horses, and it is the busiest of all: priests under wide bamboo umbrellas, flower sellers, and at dusk the Ganga aarti, in which attendants swing tiered brass lamps in choreographed sequence to drums and bells while boats raft up on the water to watch. It is a genuinely impressive piece of staging and also, in its current form, a relatively recent and highly organised production.

North again comes Manikarnika, the principal cremation ground and the reason many people come to Varanasi at all. Beside it lies the Manikarnika kund, a stepped tank held in tradition to have been dug by Vishnu, and a stone slab called the Charanpaduka. The ghat appears in an inscription of the fifth century, and cremation here is believed to release the soul from rebirth. Pyres burn continuously, wood is stacked in tonnes on the terraces above, and the site is not a viewing platform. Cameras are unwelcome, and mourning families are entitled to be left alone.

Beyond it are Scindia Ghat, then Panchganga, above which stands the Alamgir mosque built during Aurangzeb's reign on the site of an earlier Vishnu temple, and finally the northern end where the Varuna river joins the Ganges near Adi Keshava Ghat.

What the Steps Are Actually For

It is easy to read the ghats as a monument. They are working infrastructure. People bathe at dawn and again in the evening. Dhobis beat laundry on stone slabs. Boats are built and caulked on the terraces. Wrestlers train in earthen akharas cut into the bank. Barbers shave the heads of mourners. Cows occupy the warm stone, kites are flown in season, and children swim off the lower steps.

The riverfront is also changing fast, and not without argument. The Kashi Vishwanath corridor, inaugurated in 2021, cleared a wide passage between the temple and the river, relocating around 1400 residents and businesses and demolishing a dense quarter of lanes and small shrines. Supporters point to access, crowd safety and vastly increased pilgrim numbers. Critics point to the loss of an irreplaceable urban fabric and of the older buildings within it. Both positions are held seriously and the dispute is live.

Practical notes for a walker. The steps flood every monsoon, when the lower ghats disappear entirely, the aarti relocates upward and boats stop running for weeks. Dawn is the best hour, ideally from a rowing boat facing the bank as the light hits it, then back on foot. Agree boat fares before boarding, decline unsolicited guiding at the cremation grounds, and expect the walk to take three times as long as the distance suggests.

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