Varanasi in 2 days: what to see, in what order

The southern end of the ghats, where the small Assi river meets the Ganga. Every morning the Subah-e-Banaras programme starts here with an aarti, music and yoga on the steps. From Assi, rowing boats go north past about 80 ghats: Tulsi, Harishchandra with its cremation fires, Kedar with its striped steps, Dashashwamedh and Manikarnika. In winter the sun comes up from behind the empty sandbank on the far side.

The most important Shiva temple in Varanasi, one of the twelve jyotirlingas. The gold-plated spire and the small inner shrine date from the 1780s. Since 2021 the Kashi Vishwanath Dham corridor links the temple straight down to the Ganga at Lalita Ghat, with wide stone courtyards where narrow lanes used to be.

A busy Hanuman temple in a shady garden, said to stand where the poet Tulsidas, who wrote the Ramcharitmanas, had a vision of Hanuman. People bring sweet laddoos as an offering, and monkeys wait in the trees for their share. In April the temple holds a well known festival of classical music.

Two temples a few minutes apart on the same road. The Durga Mandir is an 18th-century temple painted deep red, beside a square stone tank, Durga Kund. Next door, the white marble Tulsi Manas Mandir is built where Tulsidas is said to have written the Ramcharitmanas, and its walls carry the whole poem.

The university museum of Banaras Hindu University, and one of the best museums in North India. It has Mughal and Rajput miniature paintings, old Banaras silks and brocades, sculpture from Sarnath and the Gupta period, and a room for the poet and painter Rabindranath Tagore.

A tall white marble Shiva temple in the middle of the BHU campus, built by the Birla family and finished in 1966. Its spire is among the tallest in India. It is open to people of every faith, and the walls inside carry verses from the Gita and other texts. It is calm and spacious after the old city.

A temple with no idol: instead, a large relief map of undivided India carved in marble, with mountains, rivers and seas, set in the floor. It was opened by Mahatma Gandhi in 1936 in the grounds of the Kashi Vidyapith university, and is dedicated to Mother India.

A tall brick mound with an octagonal tower on top, marking the place where the Buddha is said to have met his first five followers on his way to Sarnath. The tower was added in 1588 to remember a visit by the Mughal emperor Humayun.

A Thai Buddhist temple in a neat garden, with an 80-foot standing Buddha in sandstone, finished in 2011. It is the tallest Buddha statue in Sarnath and can be seen across the fields. Several countries have built temples in Sarnath; this is the most striking.

The oldest site museum of the Archaeological Survey of India. Its star is the Lion Capital of Ashoka, the four lions back to back that are India's national emblem, carved about 2,250 years ago. It also has one of the finest seated Buddhas in India, from the Gupta period, turning the wheel of teaching.

The place where the Buddha gave his first teaching after his enlightenment, in a deer park about 2,500 years ago. The great round Dhamek Stupa, 43 m tall, stands over ruined monasteries and the stump of an Ashoka pillar. Next door, the Mulagandha Kuti Vihar temple of 1931 has wall paintings of the Buddha's life by a Japanese artist, and a bodhi tree grown from the one at Bodh Gaya.

A new riverfront at the north end of the ghats, opened in 2023 where Khidkiya Ghat used to be. It is wide and open, with big sculptures of hands joined in greeting, lawns, food stalls and a jetty. Unlike the old ghats, a car can drive right up to it.

The 18th-century sandstone fort of the Maharajas of Banaras, on the east bank of the Ganga facing the city. The royal family still lives in part of it. The museum shows vintage cars, palanquins, silver howdahs, old weapons and a large astronomical clock. From the river terrace you look across at the ghats.