This was a journey I decided to take with my childhood best friend Yashica. I had just finished my 7th Semester at architecture college and had to do some research before I could start working on my thesis. I wanted to work on waterfront developments and couldn't think of a better town for the same.
To reach Banaras from Delhi, we could either take direct flights or 12 hour-long buses, or even trains, but we decided to take a pits-stop it by taking a train directly to Allahabad and then head to Varanasi from there. We had about three nights and 4 days in hand to visit and to travel. This trip, like all my student trips was planned on a shoestring budget, we traveled in sleeper class trains, shared rickshaws, and buses. In Allahabad, we covered Sangam, Khusrao Bagh and an old church built during the colonial era which had forbidden entry. We devoured ourselves in the local biryani and prepared ourselves for Kaashi.
We reached Banaras sometime in the afternoon and headed straight to our accommodation which was in Assi Ghat. A small room of a local musician who was a native, we then started exploring the town raw, walking from lanes to lanes, talking to kids selling cotton candies, observing the charm and dirt altogether. I was astonished at the number of shops that sold paintings of Kaashi, I wondered as to what did artists see in the town so cramped?
We strolled till evening and our nonreligious selves were trying to find meaning, looking around at people indulging in all kinds of spiritual practices we found ourselves a little out of place, just then we decided to take a boat ride to see it from a new perspective. As the boat sailed away from the ghat we could finally absorb what people had been worshiping. We could see the grandeur of a town built to reflect lights and somehow uplift beliefs, drown sorrows, and at the same time give you a ray of hope. It was a mix of all kinds of people seeking something similar that bound them together. Soon, after silently we headed for the Ganga Aarti. We were already in awe and was waiting for more, we saw the priests line up and thousands of eyes glistening to hear. The chanting began soon, we stood there frozen, wondering whether it was our spirituality or belief that gave us hope. After this experience, I could understand the artists a little better, and imagine how it would be to absorb more of this, to see each of the 80 ghats in the light of sun or glimmer of lights.
The next day we went to Sarnath and later to the west coast of Banaras to a small museum/fort called Ramnagar which became the site for my thesis later. We enjoyed the food on streets day and night only to find ourselves terribly sick on our way back to Delhi.
I would love to do this all over again to a new town maybe, something unconventional and unexplored.
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