Varanasi : Ganga Aarti, street food and more

It was time to go home for holi break. A week's break from taking classes and making notes. It was exactly one year of official announcement of COVID 19 pandemic in India. Most of our colleagues have already gone home. Soham and I have been planning many trips since January. However, none of them have come true and as usual bringing up a tension between us, I call it travel-tension. This time we both cried out in unison that Varanasi will be our stop over while going to Kolkata from Delhi, it is exactly at midway. Coming to Delhi from Sonipat these days are real problems as the farmers' protest is going on. Still, we had to complete our classes, as it is Friday and then leave college campus. However, we reached station on time. Next morning we reached Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhaya railway station, previously known as Mughal sarai, hired and auto and reached Varanasi/ Benaras. We reached our pre-booked guest house, very close to Dasaswamedh ghat, took little rest and ventured out.

When in Rome....Oh well, when you are traveling with S, food is going to be a priority. He knew a famous food joint near the ghat area. We ate our lunch there with Puri and Aloo sabji. We visited Kashi Viswanath temple first and offered Puja. Kashi Viswanath is one of twelve Jyotirlinga Shiva temples in India. The Shiva here is Viswesswara. Coming out we hired an auto and decided to visit Benaras Hindu University first. It is around 5 kilometer from the Dasaswamedh ghat area. Established in 1916, BHU campus houses many buildings which have architectural importance. The main campus is 5.3 square kilometer in area. We visited the Viswanath temple first which is inside the campus. Then we started visiting all the departments and started photographing them. Due to COVID 19 pandemic the students are not there and campus was mostly vacant.

It was almost 4 P.M. We decided to return towards Dasaswamedh ghat for Evening Aarti. However, before that we headed towards one of the most famous chat bhandar in Banaras, Kashi chat Bhandar.

We reached ghat around 6 p.m. and be seated in a suitable position. The aarti started during the sunset.

After the magnificent viewing of Ganga aarti we came to our guest house. The day was quite long and we were tired. We fell asleep first.

It was almost 5 in the morning we got up and without even washing our face ran towards the Ahilyabai ghat to watch sunrise. This is next to Dasaswamedh ghat and at the stone throw distance from our guest house.

We spent almost an hour came to our room and fell asleep again. It was almost 10 in the morning when we finally went out for our much waited food walk.

The first place was Laksmi chaiwala for malai toast. They put malai and sugar on a decently thick piece of bread after toasting it. We also tried cesarean bread where a thick pieces of bread is sliced half and the butter is poured inside its pocket. After Lakshmi Chaiwala we started walking in search of Kachuri.

Varanasi has two types of Kachuri. One is in the poori style with aloo sabji ( the one which we get in the eastern part of the coutry). The other one is Delhi style Kachuri, hard and smaller in size. We had both.

Our next stop was Blue lassi shop. They serve huge variety of lassi, price starting from Rs. 70 and can go upto 150. After lassi shop we ventured towards the sweet shops. A famous shop is Sri Ram Bhandar. Another famous one is Raasvanti. You can try Magdal, Lalpeda, Gilori, Mawa Barfi, Tiranga Barfi. A few of them are seasonal also. Prices range from Rs. 15 a piece to Rs. 40.

After having a stomach full of street food of Varanasi, we headed towards Sarnath which is 10 kilometer from Varanasi. On the way we stopped to eat famous Bati Chokha of Varanasi at Raza Bazar.

We reached Sarnath at around 3 p.m. when the sun was scorching. after spending an hour and half we went to visit Assi ghat, our last food destination of this trip. This ghat is relatively less crowded and if someone wishes to stay in relatively secluded area away from all hustle and bustle of the city, I suggest , Assi ghat is perfect for them. There is a very good cafe called Pizzaria Vaastika. We had an apple pie, a pizza and a cup of hot cappuccino. The apple pie costs us Rs. 80, Pizza was Rs. 260 and the coffee priced Rs. 80.

With this we ended our food tour to Varanasi and boarded a train from Mughal Sarai towards Kolkata