Assi Ghat

Unlike the tightly packed stone steps further north, Assi Ghat opens onto a broad, almost beach-like stretch of sand and concrete that fills up every morning with yoga groups, joggers and boat touts calling out sunrise departure times. Two small lingas on the ghat — worshipped together as Asi Sangameshwar — mark the confluence itself and are tied to the old belief that bathing here, where a tributary meets the Ganga, carries extra merit.

The ghat's literary claim to fame is older than the boat business: this stretch of riverbank is where the poet-saint Tulsidas is said to have lived and worked on parts of the Ramcharitmanas, the Awadhi retelling of the Ramayana that is still recited in households across North India. In the Puranic account, it is also where the goddess Durga is said to have rested after defeating the demons Shumbha and Nishumbha, washing her weapon in the river before moving on — a story that gives the ghat its name, Asi, read by some as a corruption of the Sanskrit word for sword.

Today Assi is as much a neighbourhood as a ghat — the cafes and guesthouses lining the lanes behind it cater to the long-stay backpacker crowd, and it is usually the quietest of the city's major ghats for anyone wanting an unhurried sunrise without the crowds that build up closer to Dashashwamedh.