Dreamerbydawn Dream. Achieve. Travel. Write.

A traveller carries many momentos. Little figurines and souvenirs and postcards to tag the miles we’ve journeyed through - our own personal odometer. But there are some etched too clearly in memory to ever need anything else.

It's a little before dawn but its hardly as quiet as one would expect. The city of Varanasi is already waking up. It's still misty, the chill rises and a little part of me wants to get back to bed, start the day a little later, but the narrow winding streets are beckoning.

The walk isn’t long, ten minutes from the lodge and there’s peace to be found in walking past those looming houses with their shared walls. You don’t need a guide to show you where to go; the road leads you all by itself. The twists and the turns and the small alleys, they all invite you along like they know you are looking for the holy river.

And what life springs up when you reach the ghats! There’s a chill rising from the river but a warmth in the crowds. There’s the peace offered by the hymns chanted by the priests on the bank and there’s the boatmen and rickshaw drivers yelling to each other, there are locals from the city cycling surely through the gaps in the already building crowds and there are pilgrims still finding their way around.

You smell the burning pyres but you also know that the sweet stall preparing for business behind you just emptied a box of cardamom into boiling milk. You chance the unpleasant sight of a half burned corpse by the water but you also see the crowd cleansing itself closer to the banks.

There are large cows that seem to simply belong in the picture and stray dogs strolling past. Its all a haze of red and yellow, holy colours representing religion and finally there are the first rays of dawn beginning your new day.

Now close your eyes and tell me, can you picture standing in the heart of all this, simply appreciating the strange tranquility emanating from the bustling chaotic crowds?

No? Then perhaps you need to pay a visit to really embrace the mystique of this old city…