Pushkar Kund (Pushkar Talab)

Set back a few lanes from the river in the leafy Assi quarter of southern Varanasi, Pushkar Kund — locally also called Pushkar Talab, and, in its temple context, Chandan Talab — is one of Kashi's deep-rooted inland water bodies.

• Unlike the ghat-side kunds that draw crowds, this square masonry tank sits in an unhurried residential pocket off Jagannath Mandir Road, ringed by old buildings, a few shade trees and the spire of the neighbourhood's Jagannath temple.
• Its name deliberately echoes Pushkar in Rajasthan — the celebrated lake-and-Brahma tirtha that Hindu tradition ranks as the king of pilgrimage waters — and, like many of Varanasi's dozens of named tanks, it lets pilgrims touch the merit of a distant holy place without leaving the city.
• Fed historically by seepage and monsoon rain near the old Assi stream, it belongs to Kashi's ancient hydrology of stepwells, kunds and talabs that the Kashi Khanda of the Skanda Purana lovingly catalogues.
• The tank is inseparable from the Jagannath temple complex it adjoins, a striking miniature of Puri's great shrine.
• That temple was raised in 1802 by the merchant-benefactors Beni Ram and Vishambhar Ram, and in 1806 they began Varanasi's own Rath Yatra, still held every year in the month of Ashadha (June–July), when the wooden images of Jagannath, Balarama and Subhadra ride a chariot from near Assi toward Rathyatra crossing.
• The pond served the temple's ritual life — a Chandan Talab where, as at Puri, the deities' sandal-paste boating and cooling rites were remembered.
• Today the kund is a modest, contemplative stop rather than a thronged one: a place to sit on the steps, watch reflections, and sense how Kashi folds far-off sacred geographies into its own.
• For the vegetarian traveller, this is easy, worry-free territory.
• Assi is one of Varanasi's most sattvic pockets, thick with pure-vegetarian sweet shops, kachori-sabzi corners and thali houses, and the temple neighbourhood keeps a strictly meat-free character.
• Reliable pure-veg names within a short auto or walk include Ksheer Sagar at Sonarpura for milk sweets and a clean thali, and — a little further toward the old city — Kashi Chat Bhandar and Keshari Restaurant near Godowlia.
• One honest caution common to all of Varanasi: many roadside 'thandai' or lassi stalls quietly add bhang (cannabis).
• Simply ask for plain lassi or plain thandai without bhang, and stick to the family sweet houses above, where the offering is wholly vegetarian and intoxicant-free.
• Because it lies barely half a kilometre from Assi Ghat, Pushkar Kund pairs naturally with a dawn walk to the river for Subah-e-Banaras, followed by a slow loop past Lolark Kund and Tulsi Ghat.
• It rewards travellers who like their heritage quiet, local and off the tour-bus grid.