River sights in Varanasi
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The Ganges River
The River Ganges provides millions of Indians with an important link to their spirituality. Every day about 60,000 people go down to the Varanasi ghats to take a holy dip along a 7km stretch of the river. Along this same area, 30 large sewers are continuously discharging into the river.
The Ganges River is so heavily polluted at Varanasi that the water is septic - no dissolved oxygen exists. The statistics get worse. Samples from the river show the water has 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100mL of water. In water that is safe for bathing this figure should be less than 500!
The problem extends far beyond Varanasi - 400 million people live along the basin of the G…
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Ghats
Spiritual life in Varanasi revolves around the ghats, the long string of bathing steps leading down to the water on the western bank of the Ganges. Most are used for bathing but there are also several 'burning ghats' where bodies are cremated in public - the main burning ghat is Manikarnika and you'll often see funeral processions threading their way through the backstreets to this ghat.
The best time to visit the ghats is at dawn when the river is bathed in a mellow light as pilgrims come to perform puja (literally 'respect'; offering or prayers) to the rising sun, and at sunset when the main ganga aarti ceremony takes place at Dasaswamedh Ghat. Around 80 ghats border th…
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