Nai Sarak Bazaar

Nai Sarak — literally the "new road" — is one of the busiest retail arteries of Varanasi's walled old city, threading roughly north from the Godowlia crossing towards the historic Chowk quarter near Kashi Vishwanath Temple.

• Despite its name, the street is far from new: it is a long-settled commercial lane where narrow, tightly packed shopfronts spill their wares onto the pavement and a steady river of pedestrians, cycle-rickshaws and handcarts keeps the whole stretch in constant motion.
• For generations of Banarasis it has been the go-to address for two very different needs at once — the printed word and the woven cloth — and both trades still define its character today.
• The street is best known as a book and stationery hub.
• Rows of publishers, wholesalers and retailers such as Saraswati Books deal in school and college textbooks, competitive-exam guides, Hindi and Sanskrit titles, religious literature, ledgers, exercise books and office paper, making it the place local students and teachers head to at the start of every academic year.
• Interleaved with the booksellers are cloth merchants and saree showrooms — the lane forms part of the celebrated old-city textile belt that runs on into Chowk and Thatheri Bazaar, where Banarasi silk sarees, suit fabric, lehengas and wedding trousseau are sold from small, mirror-lined first-floor showrooms.
• General stores, bag and stationery wholesalers, sweet shops and pavement vendors fill in the gaps, so the sensory mix shifts every few metres.
• There is no monument to tour here and no ticket to buy; Nai Sarak is an experience of everyday Kashi rather than a sight.
• Come to browse, bargain and soak up the layered, unhurried commerce of the old town, ideally folding it into a wider walk between Godowlia, Dashashwamedh Ghat and the Vishwanath temple lanes.
• Prices are keen, haggling is expected in the cloth shops, and the crowds thicken sharply in wedding season and around festivals.
• For vegetarian travellers the surrounding neighbourhood is a delight, because Varanasi's old city is overwhelmingly satvik and pure-vegetarian by long tradition.
• Within a few minutes' walk you can graze the legendary chaat at Kashi Chat Bhandar, sit down to a full thali or South-Indian spread at the pure-veg Keshari Restaurant, or dip into a plate of kachori-sabzi and jalebi at old Godowlia sweet houses.
• No meat, fish or egg intrudes on this stretch of the bazaar, so shopping and snacking can be woven together with complete ease.