Tulsi Ghat

Tucked just above Assi Ghat at the quiet southern end of Varanasi's crescent riverfront, Tulsi Ghat is one of the city's most soulful and least crowded ghats.

• It carries the name of Goswami Tulsidas, the sixteenth-century poet-saint who lived here and, in the Awadhi tongue of the common people, composed the Ramcharitmanas and the beloved Hanuman Chalisa.
• Once known as Lolark Ghat, the steps were rebuilt in solid stone in 1941 by the industrialist Baldeo Das Birla, but the spirit of the place remains devotional rather than grand.
• Ochre-washed buildings rise from the water, a modest Tulsidas ashram guards the saint's legacy, and the pace is slow enough to actually hear the river.
• Inside the little shrine here, pilgrims still venerate relics tied to Tulsidas himself: a Hanuman idol he is said to have installed, his wooden clogs (khadau), his seat, and a preserved fragment of the boat he used to cross the Ganga.
• The ghat is also the setting of two living traditions he is credited with beginning around four centuries ago.
• During the Hindu month of Kartik (October-November), the riverbank stages the Krishna lila, and on the fourth day of the bright fortnight the whole embankment fills for Nag Nathaiya, the dramatic re-enactment of the boy Krishna dancing atop the serpent Kaliya, when a performer leaps from a pipal tree into the river to roars from thousands of boats.
• Nearby, the Lolark Kund draws couples who bathe and pray for children during Lolark Shashthi.
• Tulsi Ghat also has a quietly modern significance.
• Since 1982 it has been the base of the Sankat Mochan Foundation and its Swatcha Ganga environmental laboratory, founded by the mahant and hydraulic engineer Veer Bhadra Mishra, honoured by the United Nations and TIME magazine for decades of work to clean the river.
• To sit on these steps is to feel devotion and ecology braided together.
• For vegetarian travellers this corner of Kashi is a delight, because the entire old-city riverfront is overwhelmingly satvik and pure-vegetarian, with no meat, fish, egg, or alcohol served near the temples and ghats.
• A short walk toward Assi Ghat brings you to pure-veg favourites such as the wood-fired Pizzeria Vaatika Cafe, the wholesome all-day plates at Aum Cafe, and a cool glass of pure-vegetarian sweets at Ksheer Sagar, so you can spend an unhurried morning here and eat well without ever compromising your diet.