Built by Raja Man Singh of Amber in the early 1600s, one of Kashi's oldest ghats. Sawai Jai Singh II later crowned it with a stone observatory — the Jantar Mantar — its instruments still reading the sky above the river.

Where Brahma himself performed the Dasha-ashwamedha yajna — the ten-horse sacrifice — to welcome Lord Shiva back to Kashi. Each evening, the Ganga Aarti transforms this stone into a stage for fire and devotion.

Rebuilt in stone by the Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar in the late eighteenth century, one of many ghats and temples she restored across Kashi. Her name endures here as a quiet act of devotion cut into the riverbank.

Raised in 1912 by Shivaji Narayan Munshi, a minister of the Nagpur state, its broad steps and carved facade have made it one of the river's most photographed faces — a favourite backdrop for yoga at dawn and cinema by dusk.

Commissioned by the royal family of Darbhanga in the early twentieth century, its palace of arches and domes still rises above the water — Indo-European grandeur grafted onto the oldest of Indian rivers.

Named for the temple of the Chausath Yoginis, the sixty-four fierce forms of the goddess, that stands just behind it. One of the ancient ghats abutting Dashashwamedh, bathed by pilgrims for centuries before the ghats were named at all.

Its red-and-white striped steps rise to the Kedareshwar temple, a Shiva shrine so beloved by South Indian pilgrims that a bath here is said to rival a journey to Kedarnath itself.

One of Kashi's two cremation grounds, named for the legendary king said to have laboured here as a lowly caretaker rather than break a vow of truth — a story of dharma older than the stones themselves.

Named for its riverside Hanuman temple, this ghat has long doubled as an akhada — a traditional wrestling ground — where pehlwans have trained on the same banks for generations.

Once the threshold of the Maharaja of Varanasi's riverside estate, its name recalls the shivala — the small Shiva shrine — that watched over this southern bend of the Ganga.