Raja (Bhaisasur) Ghat

Raj Ghat stands at the northern end of the great crescent of ghats that sweeps along the western bank of the Ganga in Varanasi. It is the northernmost of the main chain of ghats, the point where the riverfront city begins and, for many pilgrims, where their walk along the river ends. The name alone tells its story: raj, the king, for this was a ghat of kings — the landing place of royal processions and royal cremations in old Kashi. Broad stone steps climb from the water in a wide, unhurried sweep, and there is a gravity about the place, a solemn and storied character that other ghats, however grand, do not quite possess. The Raj Ghat bridge, a double-decked giant built in 1887, strides across the river just to the north, its shadow falling across the water.

Unlike the crowded ritual stages of Dashashwamedh or Manikarnika, Raj Ghat is a quieter, more reflective part of the riverfront. Morning brings the bathers — old men in dhotis, women in saris, pilgrims who have come by train to Kashi railway station nearby — and the boatmen who moor their wooden craft along the shore. The ghat is famous among the people of Kashi for pind daan, the offering of rice balls to the ancestors, and for asthi visarjan, the consignment of ashes to the Ganga, and some of the most renowned priests of Kashi keep their stations on these steps. There is a dignity to the place, a sense that one has stepped out of the clamour of the city into an older, more patient India.

Here, according to the archaeologists, is where the city itself began: remnants of walls, pottery and brick believed to be some 2,800 years old have been found beside the ghat, the remains of Kashi's first settlement, and the site is today protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. The kings who ruled this ancient capital gave the ghat its name, and their memory still hangs in the air along with the smoke of funeral pyres and the smell of wet stone. For the visitor, Raj Ghat rewards a slow approach — a walk down the wide steps, a long look at the river, a seat on the stone in the evening light. It is the northern gate of Kashi's sacred riverfront, royal in name, ancient in fact, and solemn in character.

The history of Raj Ghat is, in a real sense, the early history of Kashi itself. Excavations beside the ghat have uncovered the remains of what many archaeologists consider the city's original settlement — broken walls, hand-thrown pottery and the famous brick of the region — dating back nearly three millennia, to around 800 BCE. Here, where the wide river met the land, the first Kashi grew: a royal residence, a marketplace, a place of worship, the seed from which the greatest city of pilgrimage on earth would spring. The site is now a protected monument under the Archaeological Survey of India, and the low mound of earth beside the ghat is one of the most important archaeological landmarks of the riverfront.

In the centuries that followed, the ghat became the stage for the royal life of Kashi. The Gahadavala dynasty, whose inscriptions date to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, governed from this northern quarter, and the lane that descends to Raj Ghat was the royal way — the road down which kings rode to bathe, and down which their funeral processions later passed, banners dipping, drums beating, the city silent in respect. It is said that in old Kashi no royal death was complete until the pyre had been lit at Raj Ghat, and no royal accession began without the new king bathing here in the Ganga. The custom gave the ghat its permanent character: a place of beginnings and endings, of crowns and ashes, woven into the very idea of kingship in Kashi.

The ghat was remade and repaired many times, most recently paved with stone in 1988, but its role has shifted with the centuries. With the rise of modern Varanasi the royal court receded, and Raj Ghat became what it is today: a working ghat of bathers and boatmen, a place of pind daan and ash consignment, and the quiet northern terminus of the great ghat walk. The old royal residences are gone, but their memory survives in the name, in the width of the steps, and in the lane that still runs like a processional way toward the water. To walk that lane slowly is to walk in the footsteps of kings — and of the ordinary citizens of old Kashi who lined it to watch them pass.

Before the sun clears the eastern bank, Raj Ghat is already awake. The first bathers arrive in the half-dark, wrapped in shawls against the chill, carrying brass lotas and small bundles of clean clothes. By six in the morning the broad steps are lined with pilgrims performing the ritual ablutions of Kashi: men standing chest-deep in the water with their hands folded to the rising sun, women pouring the river water in graceful arcs over their heads, the old who have come to die here taking their last baths, the young who have come to begin their lives taking their first of the year. The chatter of the riverbank, the splash of water and the ringing of distant temple bells blend into the particular music of the Kashi morning.

The bathing at Raj Ghat is less theatrical than at the great festival ghats, and more personal. Families come together, grandmothers instructing grandchildren in the correct mantras, fathers teaching sons how to duck beneath the water three times, how to face the sun while reciting the Gayatri. Priests move among the bathers, offering to perform the rituals for a coin or a handful of grain; vendors set out their trays of marigold garlands, vermilion, camphor and the small clay lamps that every bather sets adrift on the water. To bathe here is to take part in the oldest continuous custom of the city — a ritual performed on these very steps, in all probability, for more than two thousand years, on a site inhabited for nearly three thousand.

The bathers leave the water changed, and so does the ghat. By mid-morning the sacred work is done, and the steps turn to the everyday: boatmen mending nets, children splashing at the waterline, women beating laundry on the flat stones, holy men settling under the trees with their beads and their almanacs. Yet the morning's spirit lingers in the light on the water, and the mark of the day's first prayer is on every step. For the traveller the best introduction to Raj Ghat is this slow unfolding — to arrive before dawn, to sit above the steps, and to watch a city that has been bathing in this river since long before its name was written, begin its day exactly as it has always done.

At Raj Ghat the Ganga reveals its northern character. Here the river is wider and deeper than in the city's centre, and it moves with a slower, grander current, as if it has left the bustle of the town behind and settled into a patient journey toward the plain beyond. The water is the colour of the sky it carries — grey-gold at dawn, silver at noon, copper at sunset — and on a still evening the reflection of the double-decked bridge hangs in it like a second bridge built of light. Boats drift across the expanse, and beyond them the far bank stretches flat and green to the horizon, dotted with villages and temple spires that look at once distant and dreamlike.

The view is framed by two great spans of engineering and time. Upstream, the Raj Ghat bridge strides across the river on massive stone piers — a double-decker built in 1887, carrying the railway on its lower deck and the road above, a marvel of the British era that still carries the life of the region. Beneath and beyond it, the river opens into the northern reaches where the ghats thin out and the shore returns to fields. From the steps of Raj Ghat, a visitor sees the whole history of this riverfront in a single glance: the oldest city of India behind, the newest horizons ahead, and the great bridge holding the two together like a clasp.

Sunset is the ghat's finest hour. The sun sets behind the city, and the river turns to flame; the bridge's arches darken into silhouette, and the lamps of the far bank begin to prick the dusk. The bathers have gone home, the boatmen idle at the shore, and the last funeral smoke rises in a straight grey column that seems to stand still against the fading sky. Few places in Varanasi offer such a combination of grandeur and peace, and those who sit on the steps at that hour understand why the kings of Kashi chose this northern bend of the river for their own. The river at Raj Ghat does not perform for the crowds; it simply flows — broad, deep and old — and that is precisely its beauty.

Raj Ghat is the meeting point of two of the most intriguing ghats of the northern riverfront. To the south lies Prahlad Ghat, named for the great devotee of Vishnu whose story is told in the Bhagavata Purana — the boy prince who worshipped Vishnu against the will of his demon king father, and who was saved when the Lord emerged as Narasimha, the man-lion. The ghat is ancient, mentioned in the inscriptions of the Gahadavala dynasty, and its name keeps alive the memory of one of the most beloved tales of devotion in all of Hindu scripture. A short walk from Raj Ghat, it offers a quieter landing, often almost empty even on festival mornings.

To the north lies Bhainsasur Ghat, whose name carries a different and wilder legend. Bhainsasur is the buffalo demon — a form of the great Mahishasura whose slaying by the goddess Durga is celebrated across India at Navaratri. The very name links these northern ghats to the oldest layer of Kashi's mythology, when the riverfront belonged to the great stories of gods and demons rather than to kings and dynasties. The ghat is small and functional, used by the bathers and boatmen of the neighborhood, and it is close to the bridge, its steps disappearing beneath the great span as the ghat chain runs out at the city's edge.

Walking between the three ghats is one of the finest short excursions of the northern riverfront — less than a kilometre, from the legend of Prahlad through the royal ground of Raj Ghat to the buffalo demon's landing. The walk takes in the whole northern character of Kashi in miniature: faith, kingship and myth within a few hundred steps of the water. Where the ghats end, the riverfront returns to fields and the bridge takes over the horizon, and the visitor who has walked this northern mile has seen the end of the chain — the point where the sacred city meets the plain, and where the Ganga, freed of the town, turns at last toward the sunrise.

Raj Ghat is both a cremation ground and a place of daily worship, and the visitor's first duty is to understand which is happening at any given moment. When a funeral procession descends the steps, or when a pyre burns on the platform, the correct response is stillness: to pause, to lower the voice, and to give the family the space and silence they need. Photography is never appropriate during the rites of death, and even at other times the camera should be used with judgment — a ghat is not a museum, and the people on it are not exhibits. A rule of thumb that serves well in all of Kashi: if you would not photograph it at home, do not photograph it here.

A few practical courtesies make a visit to Raj Ghat easy and welcome. Dress modestly, as you would at any holy site in India; keep your shoes at the top of the steps, as the platform is sacred; and remember that offerings — a garland, a few flowers, a lamp — are always more appreciated than money pressed into a stranger's hand. The priests and boatmen who approach visitors are mostly honest men earning a hard living, but a polite namaste and a firm no is the language they understand best. Beware of anyone who offers to perform rituals for you without being asked, and never accept a boat ride without agreeing the fare and the route in advance.

Above all, the ghat asks for the one thing it has always asked of kings and beggars alike: humility in the presence of the river. The Ganga at Raj Ghat is worshipped, worked and mourned upon in the same morning, and the visitor who holds all three in the same reverence will take away far more than photographs. Sit quietly on the steps for a while, let the bells and the water find their rhythm, and allow the ghat to reveal itself at its own pace. In the end, respect at Raj Ghat is simple: observe the sacred as sacred, treat every person as a fellow traveller, and leave the ghat as you would leave a temple — with the river's blessing and not a trace of offense.