We arrived in Varanasi after dark. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Having left the hotel in Khajuraho at 8 am for what google maps estimated was a 6.5-hour drive–and the driver said would be eight hours–we expected to arrive in enough time to settle into our hotel before dinner. Instead, we had a bone-jolting twelve-hour drive over roads that were sporadically under repair–or that certainly should have been, too late and weary and sore to even consider dinner.

I consider it a personal act of bravery that Dan and I nevertheless signed up for a 6 am boat tour of the Ganges River the next morning. But then, instead of a day and a half, we now had only the one complete day in Varanasi, and we had to make the most of it.

A word about our hotel: We were staying at the budget Hotel Alka (see my review here). It’s a great little hotel that is right on one of the ghats overlooking the river. So we didn’t have far to walk to our boat. This is good, since it wasn’t yet the least bit light when we left.

Now, not light is definitely not the same thing as not noisy. To the contrary, there were shouts and singing, bells and drums, a mayhem of noises, happy and intense. There was, in fact, a major celebration of the sunrise-to-be going on just one or two ghats upriver.

Farther up it wasn’t quite as crowded, but people were already bathing in the holy river at this sacred time of day.

The faintest light was creeping into the sky, enhancing the city’s unique beauty.

People were beginning the activities of the day.

And–beautifully–the sun rose over the Ganges River.