The first time I visited Varanasi was also the first time I visited India. It was 1975 and I was 33 years old. And while I snapped a roll or two of Kodachrome, I would hardly have called myself a photographer. The pictures I took were mostly touristy snaps of boats, temples, sacred cows and the occasional pilgrim—from a distance. Poor man’s postcards.

Known as the “City of Death” out of a Hindu belief that dying and being cremated in Varanasi leads to salvation, the ancient city blew me away. I’d never been anywhere like it. With its miles of ghats (steps), leading from scores of temples down to the sacred Ganges River, in which men, women and children bathed with purpose and excitement, Varanasi seemed otherworldly—beautiful and terrifying. At night, the bodies of the recently deceased burned on cremation rafts lighting up the river and the night sky. (The rafts have since been banned, and these days cremations take place on shore, in daylight.)

Thirty-six years would pass before I returned to Varanasi, by which time—though still proudly an amateur—I had grown more serious about photography, particularly street photography. And I count a couple of the pictures I took there in 2011 among my favorites. But while Varanasi still retained its ability to amaze, confound and enchant me, I doubted I would ever return.

Until, that is, our friends Kem and Jon decided to celebrate Jon’s retirement by spending six weeks in India; there was a week in October when my wife Jane and I could join them for three days in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and three in Varanasi (plus a day in the holy city of Bodh Gaya, a dusty, five-hour drive southeast of Varanasi where a man named Gautama became the Buddha five hundred years before Jesus.).

When I told Bob Patterson, publisher of “Street Photography Magazine,” about our upcoming trip, he said the magazine got a lot of submissions from Varanasi “but not much from Kolkata, so I think that would be a good subject.”  I took his words to mean that I shouldn’t expect to get any Varanasi pictures published. (“I think enjoying your trip should be top priority,” he added tactfully.) That made good sense to me, as the Varanasi ghats must be up there with the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids of Giza and the Statue of Liberty as among the most photographed sights in the world.          

But I also took Bob’s words as a challenge: At the very least, and if only for myself, I would try to produce a few images that would never find their way onto a postcard.

Day One

As is the case with most Western visitors, our first full day in Varanasi demanded the obligatory, if breathtaking, tour of the ghats from a guided sail up and down the Ganges. In our case, our boatman (boat wallah) obligingly stopped at various ghats along the way, allowing us a different perspective from visitors on boats that didn’t pull into shore mid-tour.

In my two previous visits to Varanasi I had never come across women (much less those in gorgeous saris) bathing what I hope was their pet goat and not an ingredient in a favorite curry recipe.

Day Two

In Kolkata, a few days before, we had tried in vain to locate some of the fabled Kushti mud wrestlers, whose “sport” dates to the fourteenth century. Though we found their practice ground, they had wisely departed by the time we arrived in 95 degree heat and debilitating late-morning humidity. We were told not to worry, Varanasi was the place to find Kushti wrestlers. And sure enough, when we climbed a steep ghat where we had been told they worked out, there they were. At first the wrestlers wouldn’t speak to us, much less let us take their pictures. But, like seasoned street photographers the world over, we were patient and persevering. When my friend Jon deployed his considerable charm, they wilted and eventually turned out to be the picture of cordiality.

Once the workouts ended and their instruments of self-torture put away, one of the younger wrestlers struck a classic pose. Though I usually disdain posed pictures, something about this one made it my favorite of the day.

Leaving the wrestlers behind, we walked on a path above and behind the ghats, where we encountered a colorful cast of characters, including a wary woman seated beneath a mural of a Hindu goddess whose eyes were all that remained of her facial features,

…a seated man with a crutch, bristling with gaunt intensity,

…a woman skeptically sizing up a jam-packed clothesline,

…and nattily attired schoolboys on their way to a class.

Soon it was time for us to get back aboard our boat and return to our hotel.  On the way, I snapped one last picture, of two pilgrims silhouetted against an ancient edifice.

A baker’s dozen photographs worth keeping in two days of shooting. Ah, Varanasi!

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