From the smouldering heat of the burning Ghats to the inexhaustible devotion of human masses in pilgrimage, Varanasi is the kind of place that sends your senses into overdrive unlike anywhere else on earth. If you allow yourself to surrender to the awesomely gruesome rhythm of this holy city, the experience will stay with you a lifetime.

Varanasi is a 12hr train ride from Delhi and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The site of Buddha’s first sermon around the time of 600BCE and home to the study of religion and science, this city has long been the intersection of Hinduism, Muslim and Jainism.

Walking down any one of the winding alleyways, that run alongside the Ganga, you stumble over jagged cobblestones and pass smoky dens inhabited by sunken old men selling sweet biscuits and saris. Suddenly someone behind you is shrieking and as you turn…