Chhath Puja on the Ghats

For two dawns and dusks in the bright fortnight of Kartik (mid-November), Varanasi's riverfront turns into one of the most moving spectacles in the Hindu calendar.

• Chhath Puja is a four-day festival of thanksgiving to Surya, the Sun god, and to Chhathi Maiya, the folk mother-goddess who guards children and family wellbeing.
• Though the observance is pan-Purvanchal — the shared living heritage of Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magahi communities across eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand — nowhere is it staged more gloriously than on the stone steps of Kashi.
• Along the great sweep of ghats from Assi in the south to Dashashwamedh, Shitala, Rajghat and Adi Keshav in the north, more than three lakh worshippers gather, the air thick with the smell of incense and the plaintive melodies of Bhojpuri and Maithili Chhath geet drifting over the water.
• The heart of the festival is the arghya, the offering of water to the sun while standing waist-deep in the river.
• On the third day, at Sandhya Arghya (sunset, around 5:11 PM on 15 November in 2026), fasting devotees called vratis wade into the cold Ganga holding a soop — a flat bamboo winnow heaped with thekua, sugarcane, coconut, bananas, turmeric root and lit diyas — and salute the descending sun.
• Before dawn the next morning they return for Usha Arghya (sunrise, around 6:15 AM on 16 November), completing a rigorous 36-hour waterless fast as the first orange light pierces the mist.
• Diyas float on the current, conch shells and bells ring out, and the ghats glow.
• This is among the most photographed moments in all of Varanasi.
• Unusually among Hindu festivals, Chhath has no temple, idol or priest — just the devotee, the river and the sun — and its roots run deep, with sun-worship echoes in the Rigveda and legends tying it to Karna, son of Surya, and to Draupadi of the Mahabharata.
• For visitors it is a chance to witness folk devotion in its purest, most communal form.
• For the vegetarian traveller, Chhath is a natural fit — the entire festival is scrupulously satvik.
• Every item of the prasad is pure-vegetarian, prepared without onion, garlic or even salt, in kitchens kept ritually clean.
• The signature offering is thekua, a firm, jaggery-and-ghee wheat cookie pressed in carved wooden moulds, alongside kaddu-bhaat (pumpkin and rice), kheer, fruit and rasiyaav.
• If a devotee shares prasad with you, accept it warmly.
• For a fuller meal, the pure-veg stalwarts around Godowlia and Dashashwamedh — Kashi Chat Bhandar, Keshari Restaurant and the century-old Ram Bhandar — are a short walk away.
• One caution common to Varanasi: many riverside 'thandai' or lassi shops serve bhang (cannabis); always ask specifically for a plain, bhang-free lassi.