When you think of India, it’s difficult not to imagine the colorful textiles, the vibrant festivals, or the busy streets filled with tuk-tuks and taxis honking their horns and inching through traffic. For this reason, I wanted to show a different side of Varanasi. I made these photos in the mornings, looking to capture those intimate moments before the madness of the day-to-day—the sacred song of the morning routine.
Varanasi is one of the oldest and holiest cities in the world and sits on the shore of the Ganges River in Northern India. In the Hindu religion, if you die and get cremated in one of the ‘burning ghats’ found along the banks of the river, you break the cycle of rebirth and go straight to heaven, and it’s believed that bathing in the river washes away your sins.
