Mansarovar Ghat

Mansarovar Ghat rests on the southern stretch of Varanasi's great riverfront, a graceful staircase of stone set between Narad Ghat and Chowki Ghat. Built in the early decades of the twentieth century under the patronage of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh of Jaipur, it carries the name of the most sacred lake of the Himalayas, Lake Mansarovar, which lies far away at the foot of Mount Kailash in Tibet. Unlike the roaring crowds of Dashashwamedh Ghat upstream, Mansarovar keeps an unhurried elegance: wide stone steps, a broad water tank at its head, and a calm that belongs to an older and quieter Kashi. Pilgrims, bathers and boatmen share the space in an easy daily routine, and the river opens before the ghat like a page of holy water waiting to be read.

The ghat is really two places joined by one staircase. At its top stands the Mansarovar tank, a wide rectangular basin ringed by its own steps, where pilgrims wash and prepare before they descend to the river. At its bottom the Ganga waits, broad and unhurried, catching the first light of the sun. Between the two, the flights of the ghat carry a constant gentle traffic: women with brass pots and marigolds, old men with cotton towels over their shoulders, sadhus in saffron, and children who slip past everyone and leap into the water. Laundry-wallahs beat cloth on the stones, barbers set up their mirrors and stools, and the bells of the small shrines ring without pause through the morning. Everything here moves at the pace of habit rather than haste.

For the traveller, Mansarovar offers the devotional life of Varanasi without spectacle. No great festivals are staged on its steps and no touts crowd its landings; the rituals are performed for their own sake, exactly as they have been for a century and more. The spiritual character of the ghat is quiet but unmistakable. A single morning spent here, watching the sun climb over the far bank while the bathers enter the water one by one, reveals more of the city's soul than a week of hurried sightseeing. The ghat asks nothing of its guests but stillness, and it repays them with the most intimate view of Kashi's oldest habit, the daily meeting of body, water and prayer. It is the perfect introduction to the southern riverfront.

At the head of Mansarovar Ghat, set back a little from the river, lies the water tank that gives the ghat its second identity. The Mansarovar Talaab is a broad rectangular basin lined with stone steps on every side, built to serve the thousands of pilgrims who move along the southern riverfront. Here they wash before prayer, sprinkle their heads with the blessed water, rest in the shade of the trees that frame its edge, and prepare themselves, body and mind, before descending the long stairs to the Ganga. In the monsoon the tank drinks the rain, and in years of high flood the river itself enters it; in the dry months it holds its own still mirror of the sky, ringed by the murmur of the old city.

The life of the tank follows the rhythm of the ghat. At dawn it is surrounded by men and women performing their first ablutions, cupping the water in their hands and letting it fall back with a murmur of mantras. Through the day it serves the neighborhood in a dozen small ways: children splash at its shallow edges, washermen rinse bundles of cloth, and water is drawn in brass pots and plastic buckets for household use. The elderly say that in earlier times a dip in the tank carried nearly the same merit as a dip in the Ganga herself, and many pilgrims still make it their first station, pausing at the water's edge for a single reverent touch before moving on to the river.

The tank has known years of neglect as well as care. The waters of Kashi have faced growing pressure from the crowding city, and the tank's level and purity have depended at every turn on the devotion of the neighborhood and the vigilance of the municipality. Yet the Mansarovar tank endures, dredged, repaired and restored again and again by hands that refuse to let it vanish. For the visitor it is the most distinctive sight of the ghat, a pool of still water that gathers the morning light, the circling pigeons and the quiet prayers of the old city into a single serene square, and that gives the whole ghat its name, its identity and much of its charm.

Mansarovar Ghat follows the classical grammar of Varanasi riverfront architecture. Long flights of dressed stone, quarried and cut by generations of masons, descend from the level of the old town to the water in an unbroken cascade, broken at intervals by broad landings that catch the feet and the eye alike. Low parapets run along the upper edges, studded with iron rings and stone bollards where the boats are moored. The steps are wide and gently sloped, comfortable for the slow descent of elderly pilgrims and sure-footed for children who race down to the water. In the older sections the original sandstone blocks still show their chisel marks, darkened by a century of sun, flood and prayer.

At its head the ghat is built like a small fortress of devotion. The Mansarovar tank occupies the center, cased in dressed stone and ringed by its own stairways. Around it stand shrines and small temples with tiled roofs, a veranda or two supported on simple columns, and the deep verandahs of old residential houses whose upper floors look down over the river. Several doorways open into the lanes behind, each framed by carved arches and painted lintels. Tea stalls and flower sellers tuck themselves into the hollows of the walls, and by evening the chai smoke drifts up the steps like a second incense. The whole composition is at once sturdy and delicate, the work of craftsmen who understood that a ghat is a building to be used hard for a thousand years.

The architecture of the ghat is also a lesson in survival. The foundations sink deep below the waterline, so that when the river rises in the monsoon the steps do not move; they simply disappear, one by one, and emerge again in the dry months without complaint. Lime mortar, iron cramps and stone so well fitted that the joints have outlasted the memory of the masons all testify to a building tradition refined over centuries. Seen from the water, at dawn, the ghat reveals its most graceful aspect, a soft curve of steps rising from the river like a staircase of the gods. Conservation work in recent years has cleaned and re-pointed the old stone, ensuring that this quiet masterpiece of riverfront engineering will receive its bathers for generations yet to come.

The foot of Mansarovar Ghat is a harbor in miniature. A scatter of wooden boats rides at the moorings, their hulls painted in bands of green, red and blue, each with its name lettered on the bow in Hindi script. They tug gently at their ropes, which are tied to iron rings set in the steps and to great stones sunk in the riverbed. There are passenger boats with awnings and low seats, slender fishing craft, and the heavier ferries that carry pilgrims and their bicycles across to the eastern bank. Bells hung from the masts make a small music in the breeze, and at dawn the whole flotilla turns its bows toward the rising sun, bobbing in the long green swell of the current.

The boatmen are the aristocrats of the river. Many of them belong to families that have worked these waters for generations, and they know the Ganga the way a farmer knows his fields: the deep channels that change with the season, the sandbanks that appear overnight, the swirls above the sunken ghats. They row standing, with a long slow stroke that eats the distance without visible effort, or punt with poles in the shallow water. Their calls carry across the river, bargaining over fares, greeting friends in other boats, singing snatches of bhajans when the mood takes them. Ask a boatman about the river and you will hear the true history of Varanasi, told from the water's point of view.

A boat trip is the classic way to see Mansarovar Ghat, and the hour before sunrise is the classic time to take it. From the river the ghat reveals its full elegance, the long cascade of steps, the tank-house and shrines above, the rows of windows watching the water like patient eyes. To the north the procession of ghats rises toward Dashashwamedh and beyond; to the south the shore relaxes into greenery near Assi. In the evening the boats return and are drawn up on the sand, tarpaulins are spread over the seats, and small cooking fires bloom along the shore. The boatmen sit in circles, talking and singing, and the river rocks their boats like a mother with her children.

Behind Mansarovar Ghat the old city climbs away in a labyrinth of lanes. The alleys are narrow, often too narrow for two people with baskets to pass, and their walls are a layered palimpsest of brick, plaster and painted signs. Carved wooden doors open onto deep inner courtyards where grandmothers sit in the shade, where mango trees grow in unlikely corners, and where washing lines cross the sky like rigging. Balconies lean over the lanes, and from them, at any hour, someone is calling down to someone else, buying milk, asking the time, gossiping. The lanes are clean in a way that surprises first-time visitors, swept daily by hands that treat them as the front rooms of the city.

The mohalla behind the ghat is a complete small world. Brass and copper shops gleam with pots and lotas; incense stalls send up clouds of sandal and jasmine; sweet shops fry jalebis and kachoris from dawn onward; flower sellers weave the day's garlands at their thresholds. Between the shops are the shrines, a Ganesh temple with a perpetually ringing bell, a cluster of Shiva lingas under a pipal tree, a tiny Hanuman shrine no bigger than a wardrobe. The residents are a mixture of priestly families, boatmen, weavers, brass workers and shopkeepers, and the whole quarter runs on an old and exact rhythm of bells, school hours, shop shutters and the calls of the aarti.

The lanes behave like tributaries of the river they serve. Every path leads down, through decreasing noise and increasing light, to the ghat, and every burden of the quarter, milk cans, flower baskets, wedding gifts, temple offerings, moves toward the water in the morning and back into the warren in the evening. A walk through these lanes is a walk through the working life of Kashi, and no visitor should miss it. The people are used to strangers and are gently curious rather than suspicious; a folded hands greeting, namaste, will open most doors, and the offer of a chai will open the rest. In the lanes, as on the ghat, the city of Shiva lives as it has always lived.

Varanasi is generous with strangers, but its generosity flows toward those who approach it with respect. At Mansarovar Ghat, modest dress is the first courtesy; shoulders and knees covered, both for men and women. Footwear should be removed at the shrines and temple steps, and many pilgrims leave their shoes at the top of the ghat before descending to the water. Bathing, for most of the people on the steps, is an act of devotion rather than display, and the visitor should watch it as one watches any prayer, with quiet attention and without staring. Silence is the most flattering compliment a visitor can pay to the dawn on the river.

Photography requires care. The ghat itself, the boats, the water, the light are freely yours; people are not. Ask before photographing anyone at close range, especially women, sadhus and children, and accept a refusal with a smile and a folded hand. Leave the offerings alone; the flowers and lamps set on the water are prayers in motion, not litter. Do not throw anything, not a wrapper, not a coin, not a flower, into the tank or the river, and take your trash back up the steps with you. Leather articles are traditionally kept away from the tank and the shrines, and smoking is avoided in the immediate vicinity of the water by most of the people who use the ghat.

A few practical courtesies will smooth the visit. When hiring a boat, settle the price before boarding and pay what you agreed; the boatmen are honest but they expect to bargain, and both sides enjoy the ritual. Sadhus and priests may approach with blessings and requests for alms; give what you choose, or refuse politely, and move on without embarrassment. At the temples, a small offering and a folded hand will be received with a blessing. Above all, remember that you are a guest in a city that has been receiving pilgrims for three thousand years. The ghat rewards patience, humility and a quiet voice with the most generous welcome in India.