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Breathe In, Breathe Out

Varanasi, India

By Alexander Schlosser

December 3^rd, 2025

First, it was quiet — almost peaceful. Stepping out of the maze-like alleys of Varanasi and down to the Ganges felt almost like arriving at the seaside. Boats moved in smooth lines, people sat scattered across the long flights of steps, alone or in small groups, watching the water drift by. Walking the many kilometres along the riverfront could almost make you forget where you were; flashes of Venice came to mind, or the Baltic Sea on a foggy autumn day. There was none of the overwhelming busyness so many people had warned about.

Varanasi is a place of contrasts that can be hard to grasp: the old and the new, the poor and the rich, and binding everything together, the ever-present layer of religion. The serenity of the waterfront has its counterpart, of course: the intense density and sense-bending atmosphere of the streets around the city’s main cremation site, Manikarnika Ghat. Much has been written about this place, so I won’t dive into the details here. It’s undoubtedly worth a visit, and it will inevitably make you question your perception of death and mourning. And just as India constantly asks you to navigate the tension between privacy and public life, Varanasi pushes this to an extreme by making one of the most personal experiences of all visible to everyone: the act of dying.

Yet Varanasi is far more than its rituals and religious gravity. You can have a wonderful time in the city without ever going near its major sacred sites. The architecture, the street food, the spontaneous encounters with strangers — all the things that make India so captivating are compressed into just a few square kilometers. It doesn’t offer the openness of Delhi’s green spaces or the more modest familiarity of Kolkata, but instead something entirely its own: a density, an intensity of all aspects of life, that is hard to find in any other city.

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Breathe In, Breathe Out

Varanasi, India

FootNotes

Kolkata, India

Atlas Mountains

Jodhpur

Jaipur

Delhi

Venice