CITY FOCUS

Choose the best places to dine, shop, and unwind when you’re in Varanasi, with our comprehensive guide.

“Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together,” American writer Mark Twain once famously said of the holy city. Called by various names—Benaras, Kashi, Varanasi—it is one of the oldest continually inhabited places in the world. Rising by the River Ganga in Uttar Pradesh, it’s considered the holiest of sites by Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists. Adi Shankara established Shaivism and Tulsidas wrote the here; it’s also the birthplace of Kabir, Ravidas, and other major figures of the Bhakti Movement (the theistic devotional trend that emerged in medieval Hinduism). First inhabited by the Aryans, Varanasi developed by the 2nd millennium BCE into a commercial hub that became widely known for its silks, perfumes, carpets, and ivory. Today, the city is visited for its numerous ghats, scores of temples, and old palaces that rise in tiers from the water’s edge. The inner city is a maze of narrow, winding lanes, where getting lost is a way of finding oneself.