Night bells in E flat, Varanasi

Oct 09, 2022, 07:25 PM

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Dashashwamedh Ghat is the main ghat in Varanasi on the Ganga River. Ganga Aarti (ritual of offering prayer to the Ganges river) is held daily at dusk.

Several priests perform this ritual by carrying deepam and moving it up and down in a rhythmic tune of bhajans.

I visited the city in 2012 with 10 others on a journey to Kolkata for a friend's (huge) wedding we were due to perform at.

Varanasi is a dizzying labyrinth like city that is both deeply spiritual (open cremation is commonly practiced by the riverbank) and overwhelming: colours, smells, sounds and characters leap out at you from every corner.

Recorded by Mike Bingham.

Part of the Well-Being Cities project, a unique collaboration between Cities and Memory and C40, a global network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed right now to confront the climate crisis. The project was originally presented at the C40 Cities conference in Buenos Aires in 2022. Explore Well-Being Cities in full at https://citiesandmemory.com/wellbeing-cities/