Vijayanagaram Ghat

Vijayanagaram Ghat is one of the gentler, less-trafficked stretches of the Varanasi riverfront, tucked into the southern arc of ghats between the busy steps of Kedar Ghat and the modest Chauki Ghat.

• It takes its name from the princely state of Vizianagaram (in present-day Andhra Pradesh), whose rulers made this lower portion of the Kedar bank pucca in 1890 and raised a compact palatial building here in a distinctly South Indian architectural idiom — a rarity along a riverfront otherwise shaped by Maratha and North Indian patrons.
• That pale, pillared mansion overlooking the Ganga is the ghat's defining silhouette, and it lends this corner of Kashi a serene, courtly character quite different from the theatrical crowds of Dashashwamedh a short walk downstream.
• The ghat's spiritual weight comes from what happened to the palace afterwards.
• The Vizianagaram royal family donated the mansion to Dharma Samrat Swami Karpatri Ji Maharaj (1907–1982), the revered ascetic and scholar who founded the Dharm Sangh and spent much of his life in Kashi; the building is today known as the Swami Karpatri Ashram.
• Two small shrines associated with the ashram — dedicated to Nilkantha (a form of Shiva) and Nishpapeshwar, whose name evokes freedom from sin — draw quiet worshippers, while the whole precinct sits within the sacred Kedar zone anchored by the famous Kedareshwar temple just above.
• In 1958 the Uttar Pradesh government further consolidated and renovated the stone steps, giving the ghat its present firm form.
• For travellers, Vijayanagaram Ghat rewards slowness.
• Come at dawn, when a shared or private rowboat drifts past the ghats in golden light and the South Indian palace glows above the water; or sit on the upper steps in the late afternoon watching bathers, dhobis and pilgrims go about the unhurried rhythms of riverside Banaras.
• Because it is neither an aarti stage nor a cremation ground, it offers a calm vantage point from which to read the wider sweep of the waterfront without jostling.
• Vegetarian and alcohol-free travellers will feel entirely at home here, as they do across Kashi's temple-town food culture.
• The lanes climbing up through Sonarpura and Bengali Tola behind the ghat are lined with pure-vegetarian sweet shops and chaat counters: Ksheer Sagar in Sonarpura for milky rabri and peda, and, a little further toward Godowlia, the celebrated tamatar chaat and palak chaat of Kashi Chat Bhandar and the crisp kachori-sabzi of Rajbandhu.
• One honest caution — Banaras is famous for thandai, and some riverside stalls spike it with bhang (cannabis); simply ask for plain, bhang-free lassi or thandai and you will be served the innocent, saffron-and-nut version.