It was very sudden, we made a plan in evening to visit Banaras(varanasi) for Dev-Diwali which was going to held the very next day and fortunately it worked.
The Dev-Diwali (“the Diwali of gods” or “Festival of lights of the Gods” ) takes place fifteen days after Diwali. It falls on the full moon of the Hindu month of kartika or kartik poornima (information from wikipedia).
I have heard that, you can’t predict the ambience of ghats of Varanasi by some of my friends who are from Varanasi and really they were true. You can’t imagine the scenes or environment just by looking at some pictures or videos of that.
At 6.30 am we left from our hostel and reached Banaras at 11.00am. First we visited BHU (Banaras Hindu University), a central university and also one of the largest residential university in India, established in 1916 by Pundit Madan Mohan Malviya. It spread over a huge area donated by then Kashi Naresh. It also has some landmarks and one of them is Vishwanath Temple. The temple premises has a statue of Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya and also has a front gate with shops on both sides for visitors. The temple is famous for its Shivling (Lord Shiva) along with the statues of Nataraj, Goddess Saraswati , Goddess Parvati and Lord Ganesh.
After this we went to Ramnagar to visit Ramnagar fort and its museum. It is located near the Ganga River. The fort and its museum tells the history of the kings of Banaras. The museum is a pantry of various types of old weapons, crowns, clocks and old cars which we have seen in old movies.
Finally at 6.30 we reached at Ghats (steps leading to the banks of river Ganga). The city has nearly 108 ghats . First we reached at Assi ghat, where some children were performing cultural dance and people were preparing Diyas( earthen lamps) for lightning in night . Visitors and tourists were travelling in boats from here to there to get enormous joy of this occasion. Many people were taking bath in River Ganga also known as Kartik Snan (taking holy bath in Ganga).
Next we visited Ganga Mahal ghat, here also the same preparation was going on. Till this time I didn’t get that view which was described by my friends but as we moved further to Riva ghat, Nandini ghat and janki ghat, the lightning of Diyas were all around us. Thousands of Diyas were on steps of ghats and ample number of Diyas were floating in the River Ganga. With this lightning we also had a view of two full moons at the same time, one of that was at his own position and the other was twinkling in smooth waves of Ganga. Now the full atmosphere was changed with the fragrance of flowers and smoke of diyas, chants of saints, crowd of pilgrims, sparkling of fire crackers, art of rangoli and a splendid scene of hundreds of floating boats from this bank to the other bank of River Ganga. It was really unpredictable and unexpected scene.
Next we moved to vachharaja ghat and jain ghat. A loud sound of song “Bagad bum bum” from a local DJ sound, stroke at our eardrums. we followed the sound and reached at it’s source. Here many people were throwing their hands and legs in inebriating way in air (dancing) and others surrounded them making a circle and clapping for them. We were waiting for this type of plateform and in a minute me, Subhanjay Karmakar, Rinku Sharma, Kamal Kishore and Naresh Sharma were presenting our untrained dance in that unknown crowd( one of the best moment of this trip).
Although there were too much crowd but the best thing to notice there was, Indian girls in western clothing and western girls in traditional Indian sarees along with a “RED BINDI” on their forehead. They were really looking damn gorgeous.
As we moved to next ghat, we saw something different form other ghats. Here there were no diyas but the full area was filled with huge flames of fire. I thought for a while that it might be a competition here to enlighten your ghat better than others’ but later I came to know that the flames were of pyres and the ghat was Harishchandra Ghat which is dedicated to cremation ritual.
Further we visited Shivala ghat , Munshi ghat and Devi Ahilya bai ghat and after that we didn’t find ourselves to go further because of the crowd and our tiredness so we captured the last scene of the beautiful night, saved it in memory card of our mind, revert from there and set back to our vehicles.
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Best moments with best buddies[/caption][caption id="attachment_126" align="aligncenter" width="788"]
Rinku Sharma (Our savvy photographer)[/caption]
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