Kashi, Banaras, Varanasi — a river city of learning and cremation, rebuilt in stone by Maratha patrons in the eighteenth century after centuries of sacking.
c. 1200 BC
Kashi
Settlement on the Ganges' west bank.
c. 528 BC
Sarnath sermon
The Buddha teaches nearby.
1194
Sacking
Ghurid armies raze the temples.
1780
Rebuilding
Ahilyabai Holkar raises the new Vishwanath temple.
The Jyotirlinga temple rebuilt by Ahilyabai Holkar in 1780, its spire covered in gold given by Ranjit Singh, now reached through the riverfront corridor opened in 2021.
No phones, bags or cameras; lockers at the gates. Lines are shortest in the early morning.
90 min
A brick and stone drum marking where the Buddha gave his first sermon, enlarged to its present bulk around 500 AD.
Combine with the museum, the Mulagandha Kuti Vihar and the Chaukhandi Stupa.
60 min
The 1750 sandstone seat of the Maharajas of Banaras on the far bank, where the royal family still lives and the month-long Ramlila is staged each autumn.
Reach it by road over the Samne Ghat bridge or by boat. The Ramlila, staged for about a month each autumn around Dussehra and recognized by UNESCO, moves across open-air sets in Ramnagar, with the Maharaja attending on an elephant.
90 min
Hinduism's holiest cremation ground, its sacred fire believed to have burned for centuries — central to Kashi's death-and-liberation tradition.
Watch from a boat or the upper steps, without photographs.
45 min
A palace built by Raja Man Singh of Amber around 1600, with an observatory added by Jai Singh II in the 1730s, now a museum of the ghats.
Next to Dashashwamedh; good to visit before the evening aarti.
45 min
A Hanuman temple traditionally founded by the poet Tulsidas, home to a classical music festival each April.
Phones are not allowed inside; mornings and Tuesday evenings are busiest.
30 min
An eighteenth-century red temple to Durga beside its tank, and next door the 1964 marble temple whose walls are inscribed with Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas.
Both are a short rickshaw ride from Assi Ghat.
60 min