Sacred City on the Ganges

You'll arrive in Varanasi by train or plane and you'll arrange your own transfer to your hotel from the local station or airport.

You'll enjoy a fascinating glimpse of this frenetic holy city en route to your hotel. Here you'll stay for the next 2 nights of your trip. You'll have a full day the next day to take in a boat trip and explore the city and riverside ghats. You'll stay in a quirky and comfortable heritage hotel on the banks of the Ganges. This hotel has well furnished rooms, each with a different local style and a different personality. There is Indian art on the walls and a basement breakfast room aswell as a small roof top restaurant where you can eat tasty local dishes and observe life on the riverside ghats below. Perhaps take an evening stroll down to the nearby ghats and watch the city and boats light up at sundown.

Today it's an early start for your private Ganges boat trip. At dawn this a particularly atmospheric experience. The Ganges is flanked by a series of ghats – broad stone staircases leading down to the water – that stretch for many miles along the Ganges. You can stroll along the traffic-free ghats, and attend the evening prayer ceremony on the main ghat where flower candles are set afloat on the river. This 'puja' ceremony, as well as ritual bathing, takes place at dawn too and you can observe this from your boat trip.

Following your dawn boat trip a local guide will take you on a short heritage walk through the old part of Varanasi. The rest of the day is free for you to explore at your own pace. Life and death rub shoulders here like nowhere else on earth, and the experience is very absorbing. Watching a cremation take place on the ‘burning ghats’ during this India trip is something that you will remember forever. Next to the cremation ghats, you’ll find kids playing, holy men smoking, cows nosing through rubbish, and women beating laundry on the rocks.