Varanasi beyond the ghats

The 5:30am boat is worth every minute of lost sleep. But most visitors leave the next afternoon, having seen only the riverfront that the city shows to strangers.

Walk inland instead. The lanes behind Dashashwamedh are a thousand years of unplanned building, and they hide akharas where wrestlers still train at dawn, tiny shrines wedged between houses, and sweet shops that have made the same three items since the 1930s.

Give a morning to Sarnath, ten kilometres out, where the Buddha gave his first sermon. The museum there holds the Ashokan lion capital — the original of the emblem printed on every Indian banknote.

Varanasi is also a weaving city. Banarasi silk is woven on pit looms in Muslim weaving neighbourhoods like Madanpura, and a good host can take you to a family workshop where a single sari takes weeks. Buy there if you buy at all.

Evenings can be the Ganga aarti, or they can be a rooftop with a thali and the sound of it happening somewhere below. Both count.