Spiritual & Pilgrimage

Faith here is daily, not staged. At Assi ghat the boats push off at quarter past five and Varanasi wakes with them: brass, water, a barber setting up. Bodh Gaya’s Mahabodhi is quietest at dawn, when Burmese and Tibetan monks chant beneath the peepal. In Amritsar you can peel garlic in the langar kitchen that feeds fifty thousand a day. Thursday evening at Ajmer brings qawwali. Beyond India: the kora at Boudhanath at dusk, the 5.30am thevava at Kandy’s Temple of the Tooth, and the 900-metre climb to Taktsang. We arrange the priest, the permission, the hour — and a guide who explains without preaching.