Dashashwamedh Ghat

Where it sits. Dashashwamedh is the busiest of the roughly eighty-four ghats that step down to the Ganges along the six-kilometre crescent of Varanasi's western bank. It lies at the midpoint of that arc, a few hundred metres below the Kashi Vishwanath temple and between Prayag Ghat to the south and Man Mandir Ghat, with its eighteenth-century observatory, to the north. The river here runs north, unusually, which is one reason the city considers this bank auspicious; the far bank is bare sand, deliberately left unbuilt, so every sunrise comes up over an empty horizon and lands directly on the ghats.

The story behind it. Two legends supply the name. In one, Brahma created the ghat to welcome Shiva to the city; in the other, he performed ten horse sacrifices — dasa-ashwamedha — on this spot. The stone terraces as they now stand are relatively recent: construction under a local raja in the sixteenth century was followed by the Maratha rebuilding that gave Varanasi most of its riverfront, with Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao rebuilding the ghat in 1748 and Ahilyabai Holkar, the ruler of Indore, rebuilding it again in 1774. Almost every ghat along this bank carries a similar patron's name, which is why the riverfront reads as a single architectural composition assembled by a dozen different courts across two centuries.

What you actually see. The ghat works as a stage on several levels at once. From before dawn, pilgrims bathe from the lower steps; barbers, masseurs, flower sellers, priests under bamboo umbrellas and boatmen tout the middle terrace; above, the buildings crowd to the edge. The evening Ganga Aarti, performed since the early 1990s by a team of young priests in synchronised movement with tiered brass lamps, conch shells and incense, has become the single most attended ritual in the city — it starts at dusk, runs about 45 minutes, and by then the steps are full and dozens of boats are rafted together offshore to watch from the water. Downstream, roughly 500 metres north, Manikarnika Ghat burns its cremation fires around the clock; upstream lie Assi Ghat and the quieter southern stretch. The Kashi Vishwanath Dham corridor, opened in December 2021, cleared several hundred buildings between the temple and the river, so the approach from Lalita Ghat is now a broad paved concourse rather than the lane it was.

On screen. The Varanasi riverfront is one of Indian cinema's essential landscapes, and film-makers have used it with real specificity. Aanand L. Rai's Raanjhanaa (2013) is the Dashashwamedh film: Kundan's Banaras is built from this ghat, Assi Ghat and the alleys around the Vishwanath temple, and the ghat's crowds appear as themselves rather than as extras. Neeraj Ghaywan's Masaan (2015), a far harder film about caste and grief that turns on the cremation trade of Manikarnika, made a revealing production choice: rather than shoot on the working cremation ghat, the team staged its ghat scenes at Nandeshwar and Raj Ghat, building the pyres there — a decision that respected the families using the real ground. Satyajit Ray had filmed the city's ghats decades earlier for Aparajito (1956) and returned to Benares for Joi Baba Felunath (1979); Laaga Chunari Mein Daag and Mohalla Assi are among many later films drawn to the same steps.

Getting there and timing. Varanasi's airport at Babatpur is 26 kilometres north-west; the main railway junction is about four kilometres from the ghats. No vehicle reaches the water — the last stretch is on foot from the Godowlia crossing, roughly ten minutes through a lane of shops. The two hours worth planning are sunrise, ideally from a rowing boat looking back at the bank, and the aarti at dusk, for which arriving 45 minutes early is the difference between a seat and a wall of shoulders. October to March is the comfortable season, with January fog and cold mornings; the monsoon can raise the river high enough to submerge the lower steps entirely and force the aarti up the bank. The steps are steep, worn and often wet, and there is no step-free access to the water. One date stands apart: Dev Deepawali, on the November full moon, when the whole bank from Assi to Raj Ghat is lined with earthen lamps and the crowds are heavier than at any other point in the year. Boat hire is negotiated at the water's edge and rowing boats, being silent, are worth the small premium over motorised ones.