In and around Varanasi

Varanasi is the home of the famous Benaras Hindu university.

Mark Twain, the English author , once wrote : "Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together". It is a city of spirituality. Temples, religion, culture, tradition, education, medicine of all kinds, astrology. arts and crafts. The Benaras silk sarees are unique and beautiful. Most importantly, the river Ganga flows through the city. It is also called Kashi and Benaras. The last time I was in this city was in the late 1940s with my parents and my younger sister. I was too young to remember any details of the place.


Viswanatha is (the form of Shiva) the primary deity here. The other temples are of Annapoorna (She is the consort of Sri Viswanatha here - not Visalakshi. I did not know about it prior to this visit. Visalakshi has a separate Temple), Bharata maata, Durga, Kaalabhairava, Kaasi Viswanatha, Kaasi Visalakshi, Mrinthyunjaya, Sankatamochana and Tulasi Manasa. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong in any of my findings. One must see the arathi to river Ganga. We went in a boat and it was spectacular from the boat. Click on the word arathi in the above line to see a video.

There were one hundred ghats along the river Ganga, I was told. But some had either deteriorated or were destroyed by external influences. Ghat means river front. The current river banks date back to the eighteenth century. I think that each ghat is marked by a lingam and has its own special place in the spiritual and ritualistic world. When we went early in the morning, there were plenty of early bathers, Yoga practitioners, meditators and Brahmin priests performing poojas. There exists lack of hygiene and people comment that only skeptics focus on this aspect and make a big issue of it. Even though I am not a skeptic, I did mind the lack of hygiene everywhere. I will stop here and write about the actual interior of the Temples soon.