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Vanarasi

Varanasi. Also known as Baranas or Benares, it stretches along the crescent of the River Ganges, its waterfront dominated by long flights of stone ghats where thousand of pilgrims and residents come for their daily rituals.

AN early boat ride at the Ganges in Varanasi can let you see people bathing in the riverbanks. Century old pavilions and palaces, temples and terraces lined up with stone steps – the ghats – stretched along the whole waterfront, changing dramatically in appearance with the seasonal fluctuations of the river level. Hindus regard the Ganges as amrita, the elixir of life, which brings purity to the living and salvation to the dead, but in reality the river is so polluted and full of effluent. Factory wastes increases the level of heavy metals to unacceptable proportion not to mention the floating human body parts.