Varanasi & the Ganges

Varanasi is not comfortable and should not be sold as though it were. It is loud, close and entirely unbothered by visitors, and two dawns on the river will do more for a traveller’s understanding of India than a week of forts. Go out by boat before sunrise, when the light is grey and the bathers outnumber the cameras. Walk the galis afterwards with someone who knows which doorway leads where. The evening aarti at Dashashwamedh is a performance and worth seeing once; the smaller one at Assi is not. Sarnath, ten kilometres away, is calm by contrast, with a 43-metre stupa and a museum holding the lion capital. Two nights is usually right.