Varanasi

"Older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together."

--Mark Twain

One of the oldest living cities in the world that has preserved its tight net of gullies and lanes, Varanasi continues to be the holiest city for Hindus, and one of the most fascinating for westerners. They say that if you die here you attain instant nirvana; through the ages, sages have come here to find harmony – from Gautam Buddha to the great Hindu reformer Shankaracharya.

The sepia image of its ghats lining the Ganga is one of the most arcane, and intriguing. And yet a crass, materialistic culture thrives here too, when the priests try to fleece you and the touts want to sell you tailor-made doses of spiritualism.

Varanasi is the epitome of everything that Westerners find ‘exotic’ in India. And yet it goes on to defy stereotypes, continuing as any normal Indian city, devoid of surprises for the Indians, yet completely revered by them. The cycle of life and death is nowhere more pronounced, for this is the city people come to die in, to rid themselves of the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, to attain ultimate salvation, moksha.

The city also holds within its alleys the depth of human despair – widows who have come here to live out the rest of their lives after their husbands have passed away, elderly people driven away by their offspring.

But the city goes on like it has for 8,000 years, populated around the convex arc of the Ganga. Each of its ghats has devotees washing their sins in the holiest river of the Hindus that lies terribly polluted today. They offer prayers, meditate, wash their laundry and bathe here. They touch their foreheads with its waters before putting their feet into it, they drink it and fill it in bottles to take away a part of it, hoping to get a draught when breathing their last breath. They immerse their loved ones’ ashes in the Ganga, hoping for heaven, praying for eternal peace.