banaras to mangarh, the long way round

i reached banaras the way you probably should. half-awake, off a train, at 5:30 in the morning, with no real plan.

i hadn’t booked ahead. i didn’t know the city’s hotels, so i took a government guest house in sigra and decided to figure the rest out from there.

i was travelling with sachin, a friend from school. he knew the rituals and the stories far better than i did, which in a city like this is the best company you can keep. half of what this trip became, i owe to him pointing and explaining.

the morning in kashi

a rickshaw carried us toward godowlia, into the part of banaras that has no straight lines. the lanes narrow until two people can barely pass, the buildings lean in overhead, and the air is thick all at once with incense, marigold, frying oil, and the occasional cow that simply will not move. just before godowlia, we stopped at kashi chat bhandar for the kind of chaat that makes you forgive the early start. then the lane opened into a small square and there it was, a huge stone nandi on a tall pillar, garlanded and worn smooth, sitting with the patience of something that has watched this road for centuries.

i’d brought a camera, the first time i’d ever used one. but cameras aren’t allowed inside the temple, only phones, so i left both outside and walked in with empty hands. i didn’t take a single photo the whole time, not even of the corridor. i think i saw more because of it.

above the rooftops you first catch the shikhara, the temple’s spire, plated in gold and throwing back the early light over a tangle of old stone. inside, the sanctum is small and ancient and pressed close, nothing like the scale you brace for. the stone linga sits low, framed in silver, dark and glistening under the water and bilva leaves people keep pouring over it. the queue carried us right up to it and, unusually, didn’t rush, so you actually got a moment in front of it instead of being moved straight along.

the gyanvapi well and the new corridor are part of the same premises, and walking them with sachin was less sightseeing than listening.

the corridor itself is the surprise. you step out of those choked, dim lanes and suddenly there’s a wide, pale marble concourse, open to the sky, running in a clean line from the temple all the way down to the ganga at the ghat below. and what stayed with me was how much old it uncovered. as they cleared the ground, small shrines kept turning up that had been quietly absorbed into the houses and walls around the temple over the years. you walk that bright new stone and the place still feels far older than it looks.

sachin filled in the local stories as we went, the way they’re passed down here. the one in the sanctum today is said to have been brought from the narmada and installed by rani ahilyabai holkar after a dream. and tucked inside the premises there’s a replica of pashupatinath, nepal’s temple, built here with the same wooden exterior as the original.

in the evening we took a boat out at dashashwamedh for the ganga aarti. the ghat drops to the water in wide stone steps, and on a usual night the priests stand on raised platforms swinging tiered brass lamps in slow circles, conch and bells and smoke, thousands watching from the steps and the boats. but the river was running high and brown that evening, swallowing the lower steps, so the aarti had been pushed off the ghat itself. from the middle of the water i watched five of them happening at once, lit up in different buildings along the bank, small constellations of fire and sound strung across the dark river. not what i came for, and somehow better.

the day ended the only way a banaras day should, on a food walk. kesar milk. jalebi and sewai. a plate of the tomato chaat this city does like nowhere else. then exhaustion, and a dawn train to prayagraj.

the river, and a purnima i didn’t plan

we reached prayagraj at sunrise. first to the bade hanuman temple, where the idol doesn’t stand like most but lies on its back, a huge reclining figure set in a pit below ground level, the whole form thick with orange sindoor. the story goes that when the rivers swell in monsoon, the water reaches down and covers it before receding.

the figure itself is a whole scene worked into the stone, and the walls around it carried painted panels telling the rest. sachin walked me through them. pinned under one foot is a small demon, ahiravana, a sorcerer-king of the underworld from the ramayana tellings, said to have carried rama and lakshmana down to patala. the catch in the story is that he could only be killed by snuffing out five lamps set in five directions at the exact same moment, so hanuman takes a five-faced form to blow them all out at once, then takes his head. held in the idol’s hand are the two small figures he carries back. that severed head turns up again across the wall panels, the way a single story gets told twice, in stone and in paint.

then the long walk out across the wide grey sandflats to the triveni, where three rivers are said to meet, the silt-heavy ganga, the deeper green yamuna, and the unseen saraswati. you can actually see the seam where the two visible rivers run beside each other in different colours before they fold together. we took a wooden boat out to that line and got in for a dip, the way everyone there does. only once i was in the water did i learn it was sharad purnima. you don’t plan these things. they just arrive.

mangarh, and a closed door

the real destination was mangarh. we’d taken the scenic detour first so we could reach it the same day, a bus to kunda, then a local hop from kunda toward the bhakti mandir at mangarh. you see it before you reach it, a large temple rising out of flat farmland, pale and ornate, ringed by gardens and a long boundary wall, far grander than the small town around it.

and the gates were shut to the public. a festival was on inside, you could hear it, and entry needed a registration we didn’t have. so we stood at the edge of the thing we’d come all this way for, looking in through the bars. fortune and misfortune wearing the same face.

the road back

the way back was the trip’s real story.

it was eid milad-un-nabi, and the road was closed for it. so we walked. caught a short lift the wrong way to the bypass. a tiny highway shop gave us ten, fifteen minutes of shade. a couple of people offered rides that didn’t feel right, so we waited them out instead. and then a bus came into view, the most welcome shape on an empty road, and we were on it.

we ate at the prayag bus stand, made the train on time, and got home safe.

not every trip gives you the thing you went for. this one gave me the road instead.