Varanasi

The currency is the Indian rupee (₹), around ₹88 to 90 per dollar and ₹16 per real in 2026; check the day's rate. 2026 ranges: tea in a clay cup ₹10 to 20, a plate of kachori-sabzi ₹40 to 80, lassi ₹50 to 120, vegetarian thali ₹120 to 250, dinner at an air-conditioned restaurant ₹400 to 900, a hostel bed ₹400 to 800, a simple guest house room near the ghats ₹800 to 2,000, a mid-range hotel ₹2,500 to 5,000 and historic river-facing hotels ₹12,000 to 30,000. A modest full day fits into ₹1,800 to 3,500 (US$20 to 40). Cash still handles almost everything in the galis, in small bills: no street stall can break a ₹500 note. QR code payment (UPI) is universal among Indians, and foreigners can increasingly pay through international wallets that support UPI. Cards work at hotels, chains and large stores. ATMs are plentiful in Cantt and Lanka, rarer inside the old city, and run out of cash on festival eves. Tipping isn't mandatory: 5 to 10% at a restaurant that doesn't charge service, ₹50 to 100 to the boatman beyond what was agreed, ₹500 to 1,000 a day for an accredited guide. Haggling over rickshaw, boat and fabric prices is normal. Ask the price before you get in, board, or let them unfold the fabric.

Airport: 25 km away, up to 75 minutes

Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport (VNS) is in Babatpur, 25 km northwest of the center, and the ride takes 45 to 75 minutes depending on traffic. A fixed-fare counter taxi or an app ride costs ₹800–1,400 to the ghats, and there are buses to Cantt station. The airport is undergoing a ₹2,870-crore expansion, with a new 75,000 m² terminal and a runway extended to 4,075 m to triple current capacity, so expect detours and temporary signage on the approach. By train, the main station is Varanasi Junction (Cantt), with Banaras (formerly Manduadih) and Varanasi City as alternatives and Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction, across the river 17 km away, as the major rail hub. Vande Bharat and express trains run to Delhi (8 to 12 hours, about 760 km), Prayagraj, Lucknow, Ayodhya, Patna, Gorakhpur and Khajuraho. Booking ahead on IRCTC is practically essential in high season.

No metro: the e-rickshaw by the thousands

Cars cannot fit through the narrow galis, but motorcycles and bicycles use some of them. Access is restricted between Godowlia and Dashashwamedh: a hotel “on the ghat” means 5 to 15 minutes on foot with your bag. There's no metro in the city, and the real transport is the electric e-rickshaw, by the thousands: ₹10–20 a seat on a shared route and ₹50–150 for a short private ride, always agreed before you get in. There are also auto-rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, electric and diesel city buses, and the Uber, Ola and Rapido apps, which work well on the wide roads and poorly in the old city. The Cantt–Godowlia cable car, 3.75 km long with five stations, ten-seat cabins and an announced fare of ₹50 to ₹100, is expected in 2026: check whether it's running yet. On the river, a rowboat costs ₹300–800 an hour for two people after bargaining, a shared seat goes for ₹100–200, and there are official electric boats. Diesel engines are banned, and the switch to CNG is only partial. You can walk the whole riverfront, from Assi to Raj Ghat, in about two hours, except during the monsoon floods, when stretches are underwater.

Violent crime against visitors is rare in Varanasi, and the main nuisance is commercial: constant approaches by boatmen, unaccredited guides, silk vendors and fake priests who start a ritual on the step and charge at the end; saying “no, thank you” once and continuing to walk resolves most of it. The objective risks are different: crowds, water, traffic and monkeys, and the stomach. Crowds: at Dev Deepawali, Mahashivratri and Bharat Milap there's real crush in two-meter alleys, and the right move is to avoid peak times and never go against the flow. Water: the Ganges current is strong and the riverbed drops abruptly a few meters from the bank. Drowning is a recurring cause of death, and fecal coliform is far above the bathing limit: going in is a health decision. Traffic and monkeys round out the list: at Durga Kund and Sankat Mochan the monkeys snatch bags, glasses and food, and a bite requires immediate rabies prophylaxis. Stomach: drink sealed or filtered water, eat what comes out boiling or freshly fried and avoid salad and street juice in the first few days. Women traveling alone report insistent staring and, in crowds, being jostled. Clothing covering shoulders and legs reduces attention, and the ghats north of Manikarnika are empty and poorly lit after 9pm. Note the two numbers before heading out: national emergency 112 and tourist support line 1363.

Shoes off: at temples, homes, and silk shops

Take your shoes off before entering any temple, many homes and a good number of silk shops, where you sit on a white mat. Shoe-check stands charge ₹10–20 at the entrance of the larger temples; socks are almost always fine.

No photos at the cremation ghats

At Manikarnika and Harishchandra, you don't photograph or film a pyre, a body, or a family, whether with a phone or a camera. Watching from a distance and in silence is accepted; put your phone away while you're in front of the pyres.

Right hand for anything passed hand to hand

Eat, hand over money, take change and accept prasad with your right hand. The left has a hygienic function, and using it for these gestures reads as uncleanliness, not distraction.

Shoulders and knees covered, no leather

Cover shoulders and legs in temples, regardless of gender; some women also cover their heads at specific shrines. Leather belts, bags, and sandals are barred from several temples, so leave them at the hotel on the day you visit.

Give way to a procession

When a funeral procession chants “Ram naam satya hai” in the alley, press against the wall, stop and let it pass. You don't cross the procession, don't film it and don't walk ahead of it.

Don't point your feet or step over someone seated

Don't point the soles of your feet at people, images, altars or the river, and don't step over someone sitting on the step. Sitting cross-legged or to the side solves it, and that's what everyone does.

Booking “on the ghats” and expecting a taxi at the door

Booking a hotel “on the ghats” and imagining the taxi pulls up to the door. Every vehicle stops at Godowlia, Assi or Sonarpura, and from there it's 5 to 15 minutes on foot through alleys with steps, bag in hand. Ask the hotel for the exact drop-off point and a porter before you arrive: whoever doesn't ask carries their own bag up the steps.

Closing the boat deal without fixing price and route

Closing the boat, guide or rickshaw deal without fixing price, duration, route and number of people before setting off. Negotiating at the end of the ride, once you're already mid-river or at the end of the lane, always costs more.

Accepting that “the Vishwanath is closed”

Accepting “today the Vishwanath is closed, I'll take you to another temple” at the Godowlia exit, or buying silk at a shop pointed out by the driver. The middleman's commission runs between 30% and 50% of the price, and you're the one who pays it.

Drinking a “special lassi” without asking

Drinking a “special lassi” without asking what's in it. Bhang is legal at licensed shops in Uttar Pradesh, but the usual dose knocks out anyone unaccustomed to it for eight hours or more, and it sometimes shows up in drinks offered for free.

Walking the ghats at noon

Planning a walk along the ghats at noon between April and June. The stone stores heat, there's no continuous shade and heatstroke is the most frequent medical problem among visitors those months. Walk from 5:30am to 9am and after 5pm.

नमस्ते / प्रणाम (namastê / pranam)

Hello and goodbye, with hands together; “pranam” is the most respectful form, used with elders

का हो गुरु? (ka rrô guru?)

“Hey, master?”: the bhojpuri street greeting; “guru” here is an affectionate address between equals

हर हर महादेव (har har mahadêv)

“Shiva everywhere”: a greeting and celebration shout, heard on the ghats and in processions

कितने का है? (kitnê ka hai?)

How much does it cost? The first useful phrase at any stall, boat or rickshaw

थोड़ा कम कीजिए (thora kam kíjie)

“Come down a little”: the polite formula for negotiating price without confrontation

नहीं चाहिए, धन्यवाद (nahin tchárrie, dhanyavad)

“No thanks, I don't want it”: ends a vendor's approach without rudeness

The bluff and the river bend

Varanasi sits on a 20-to-25-meter clay-and-loess bluff on the west bank of the Ganges, at about 80 m elevation, between the mouth of the Varuna river to the north and the old Assi stream to the south, today reduced to a drainage channel. The urban stretch of the river is 500 to 700 m wide at high water and traces a roughly 7 km bend to the north; the east bank, sandy and flood-prone, stays practically empty, with only Ramnagar further south, and that is what keeps the open skyline seen from the steps.

The 84 ghats

Along the bluff on the west bank run the 84 ghats, nearly 7 continuous km of stairway, from Assi Ghat in the south to Adi Keshava, near the mouth of the Varuna, with Manikarnika and Harishchandra as the two cremation ghats.

The gridless layout and the climate

The street plan has no grid: the old center is a tangle of galis 1.5 to 3 m wide, where only pedestrians, cows and motorbikes get through, organized less by streets than by pilgrimage circuits. The largest of them, the Panchkroshi Parikrama, about 88 km in five stages, still traces the city's symbolic boundary. Motor roads are few: Dashashwamedh Road, Luxa, Lanka–Assi and the Grand Trunk Road, with the new city and the housing complexes to the west, toward Sigra, Mahmoorganj and Bhelupur. The climate is humid subtropical, with 1,000 to 1,100 mm of rain concentrated from June to September, summers of 40 to 45 °C and winters of thick fog over the plain.

One of the homes of Hindustani music

Varanasi is one of the main centers of Hindustani classical music. The Benares gharana formed entire lineages of tabla and vocal music: Kishan Maharaj, Samta Prasad, Girija Devi (1929 to 2017), a thumri master, the brothers Rajan and Sajan Mishra, and the shehnai of Ustad Bismillah Khan (1916 to 2006, Bharat Ratna in 2001), who played at the Balaji temple and whose playing became a defining sound of the country. Ravi Shankar was born here in 1920. The kathak dancer Sitara Devi, born in Kolkata, also trained in the cultural tradition of Benares. The music calendar is public and cheap: the Sankat Mochan Sangeet Samaroh has gathered five to six whole nights of free concerts in April since 1923, and at Assi Ghat there's classical music at dawn every day.

The hub of modern Hindi

In literature, the city is the hub of modern Hindi. Kabir, a 15th-century weaver and poet, was born here, and his work is sung by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. Tulsidas began the Ramcharitmanas in 1574, in Ayodhya, and wrote part of it in Varanasi, where he lived beside the ghat that now bears his name; it's this version of the Ramayana that the city stages every year. Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850–1885) is treated as the founder of modern Hindi prose; Premchand was born in Lamhi, 4 km away, in 1880; Jaishankar Prasad and, closer to our time, Kashinath Singh, with the novel “Kashi ka Assi” (2004), captured the city from the inside. Sanskrit scholarship stays alive at Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya, heir to a 1791 college, and at BHU.

Banarasi silk: the city's third cultural economy

Varanasi also lives by the loom. The Banarasi sari, with its metallic-thread brocade, has held a geographical indication since 2009 and is made mostly by Muslim Ansari families in Madanpura, Alaipura and Lallapura; a piece made entirely by hand can take anywhere from two weeks to six months. The city also has a physical routine of its own, with wrestling akharas by the river and swimming in the Ganges, and a cinema that uses it as both setting and subject, in films such as “Masaan” (2015), “Raanjhanaa” (2013) and “Mukti Bhawan” (2016). Residents cite “banarasipan”, a mix of banter, deliberate idleness and contempt for hurry, as both identity and excuse.

“Banaras: City of Light”, Diana L. Eck (1982)

The reference study on the city's sacred geography: why the ghats stand where they do, what the pilgrimage circuits mean, and how Kashi reads like a map.

“Masaan”, by Neeraj Ghaywan (2015)

Filmed at the ghats and the Harishchandra crematorium, it follows two stories about caste, debt and the middle class in Varanasi, without the usual tourist framing.

“Kashi ka Assi”, by Kashinath Singh (2004)

A satirical novel about the Assi neighborhood between the 1980s and 2000, the arrival of foreigners and the conversion of everyday life into a product; it gave rise to the film “Mohalla Assi”.