The ghats from Assi to Manikarnika

In this episode

• Walk the stone steps from Assi to Manikarnika, feeling the cool sunrise air.
• Notice everyday river life—washers, buffalo, quiet observers—without performance.
• Respect each ghat: walk slowly, hold hands near water, and avoid photos at sacred sites.

Read along

Namaste. It is just before sunrise in Kashi. The air is cool. If you are listening at home, imagine yourself standing at the top of a wide flight of stone steps. Below you is the Ganga, grey and quiet, with a few boats already out. Let us breathe in once, slowly, and begin walking.

In this series we will walk the ghats of Kashi together. A ghat is a flight of riverside steps, and Kashi has more than eighty of them, running one into the next along the western bank of the river. Today we walk north, from Assi to Manikarnika, a little under four kilometres. In the episodes that follow, we will come back and spend longer at a few of these places.

A word before we set off. In the early morning the steps can be wet and slippery, and some of them are steep. Walk slowly, keep to the dry stone, and if you have children or elders with you, hold their hand near the water.

We start at the southern end of the city, at Assi Ghat. The name comes from the small Assi river, which once met the Ganga here. The Kashi Khanda speaks of the sacred area of Kashi lying between the Varuna and the Assi, and so this is where the old boundary begins.

Assi is lively in the morning. There is often music and a morning aarti, which is worship with lamps. There are students from the university nearby, and people doing their morning practice on the steps. Under a large pipal tree, a Shiva linga receives water from anyone who passes.

A short walk north is Tulsi Ghat. Kashi's tradition holds that Goswami Tulsidas lived here, and composed part of the Ramcharitmanas in this city. People will show you the place where he is said to have stayed. In the month of Kartik, a lila called Nag Nathaiya is staged here, in which the young Krishna's victory over the serpent Kaliya is enacted on the river itself. Crowds gather on the steps and on boats to watch it.

We keep walking. The ghats run into one another. Some are wide, with big stairs. Some are narrow. Some have old palaces behind them, built by kings and families from different parts of India who wanted a home on the Ganga. You will hear Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu. Kashi has always held all of India.

You will also see the everyday life of the river. A man washing clothes on a flat stone. A boy leading a buffalo down to the water. An old woman sitting very still with her eyes closed. A boatman bailing water from his boat with a tin. Nobody here is performing for you. This is simply how the morning goes, and has gone for a very long time.

Now we pass Harishchandra Ghat. This is one of Kashi's two cremation ghats. The name remembers King Harishchandra, who, in the story told in the Puranas and in Kashi, held to truth through every hardship and served for a time at a cremation ground in this city. Walk quietly here. This is a place of grief for the families who come, and of great faith. Please do not take photographs.

A little further is Kedar Ghat, with its steps painted in red and white stripes and the temple of Kedareshwar above. Many families from south India have long lived around this ghat, and the worship has a southern flavour. So Kedarnath of the Himalaya is remembered here too, in Kashi.

The sun is rising now, across the river. Kashi's ghats are all on the western bank, facing east, so every ghat receives the first light at the same moment. On the far bank there are no buildings, only sand and a line of trees, and so the sun comes up clear over open land.

Many people stand in the water up to their waist, cup their hands, and offer water to the sun. This offering is called arghya. Some use a small brass vessel, a lota, and some use only their hands. If you watch for a while, you will see that no two people do it exactly alike. Some say a long prayer. Some say nothing at all.

If you would like to bathe, stay near the steps, where others are bathing, and hold on to the chains or poles fixed at many ghats. The Ganga looks calm in the morning, but the current is strong a little way out. Please do not swim out, and do not use soap in the river.

We walk on and reach Dashashwamedh Ghat, the busiest ghat in Kashi. The Kashi Khanda explains the name. Brahma performed ten ashvamedha sacrifices here, das ashvamedh, and so the ghat took the name. In the evening this is where the large Ganga aarti is held, with lamps raised by a row of priests. In the morning it belongs to bathers, flower sellers, pandas under their umbrellas, and boats waiting to take people out. The pandas are the priests who help pilgrims with their rites, and many families have gone to the same panda's family for generations.

Just north is Man Mandir Ghat, with a sandstone palace built by Raja Man Singh of Amber. On its roof, in the eighteenth century, Sawai Jai Singh the Second built an astronomical observatory, one of the Jantar Mantars. Faith and the study of the sky share one building.

A little further on is Lalita Ghat, where a broad new passage now leads up from the river to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Near it stands a small wooden temple of Pashupatinath built in the Nepali style. Pause here if you like, and look up the steps toward the golden shikhara.

As we walk the last stretch, notice how the riverbank changes. The lanes above the steps grow narrower. You may see stacks of wood along the walls, and smoke rising a little way ahead. The chatter of the busy ghats falls behind us, and people speak more softly. Families pass with folded hands, and some carry flowers. Let your own steps slow down too. There is no hurry here, and nothing we need to see up close. We are guests on this bank, and the families who come here have come for their own reasons.

And now we come to Manikarnika.

This is the heart of Kashi's belief about life and release. The Kashi Khanda tells of a pool here, the Manikarnika Kund, which Vishnu dug and filled at the beginning of creation. It says that an earring, a manikarnika, fell here from Shiva or from Parvati, and gave the place its name. The tellings vary, and we share them as they are told. The kund can still be seen on the steps above the ghat.

Manikarnika is also Kashi's great cremation ground. Local tradition says its fires have burned without stopping for as long as anyone can remember. Families come here from across India to bid farewell to someone they love. The Kashi Khanda says that Shiva gives the Taraka mantra, the mantra that carries one across, to those who leave their bodies in Kashi. For the families here, this is a place of sorrow and of trust at the same time.

So stand at a distance for a moment. Do not take photographs, and do not film the cremations or the mourners. Do not go close to the pyres. If anyone offers to show you around for money, politely say no. Simply stand, fold your hands if you wish, and let the place be what it is.

Let us gather our walk.

We began at Assi, the southern boundary of old Kashi. We passed Tulsi Ghat, where Tulsidas is remembered, and Harishchandra Ghat, which honours a king of truth. At Kedar Ghat the Himalaya is remembered in the south of Kashi. We watched the sun rise over the river, and reached Dashashwamedh, named in the Kashi Khanda for Brahma's ten sacrifices, and Man Mandir with its observatory. We ended at Manikarnika, where the Kashi Khanda places its kund and where Kashi keeps its deepest trust.

Some pilgrims walk this riverbank with a special purpose. Kashi's tradition speaks of the Panchatirthi, five sacred bathing places visited in one day: Assi, Dashashwamedh, Adi Keshava, Panchganga and Manikarnika. We have touched three of them this morning. The other two lie further north, and we will reach them at the end of this series.

One thing to take with you. Every ghat faces east, and every person greets the sun a little differently. Tomorrow, as soon as you wake, turn toward the light from your window, and take one breath of thanks before you pick up your phone.

In the next episode, we go back to Assi and stay there for a whole morning, to hear what the river's name means and how the day begins.

Keep going

• Listen: The ghats from Assi to Manikarnika
• Previous: The household of Kashi: Annapurna, Kaal Bhairav and Dhundhiraj Ganesh
• Next: Assi at first light - the river's name and the morning gathering
• हिन्दी में पढ़ें
• All episodes of Kashi Vishwanath: the city of light