Ganges Boat ride: Better morning or evening?

james michael

Hello,

I will be visiting Varanasi in March and our agent is booking an evening boat ride on the Ganges. But is it better in the morning? Or are the ghats equally active morning or evening?

somnath

Morning : you’ll find sadhus and pilgrims are offering to Sun / Ganges.
Evening : main attraction ‘arati’ at dasashwamedh ghat after the ride.

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TracyB

They are both good, but if u only do the evening, u will miss seeing the pilgrims bath in the holy Ganges...and the beautiful sunrise..

But if u miss the evening, u will not see the candle lit boats and the the aarti being performed on the banks of the ganges.

I personally think u need to do both to get the full experience.

It is also obviously dark in the evening and does not make for good pic's...

So try and do both....

Jorge Reverter

If you must choose, always very early in the morning. You can hire a boat anytime during the day for one hour or two. In the evening is also interesting but "aarti" looks like a tourist spot altough worth to see it.

Jorge

camelgirl

EARLY Morning if you can do only one boat ride.

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Indizen

Morning, as early as possible.

Kingstonian

(It was tipping down with rain when I got up before dawn to make the morning trip 10 days ago - cancelled ...)

I did an evening boat trip a couple of days later, upstream from Raj Ghat to Dasaswamedh Ghat, in time for the aarti there, and in time to see the lights eventually drifting down the river from Assi Ghat further upstream - fabulous evening light, no pilgrims, but a tiny sliver of a new moon, a kingfisher leading the way, the sights and sounds of evening - people chatting, boys playing cricket, music, kids hanging out ...

Oh, and the tourist boats pushing and crowding round the main burning ghat (Manikarnika Ghat), which looked wild and infernal after sunset.

When I reached the main ghat, (once I could persuade the boatman to drop me there, not 100 yards away, for the money agreed), the atmosphere seemed almost relaxed - the touts taking a break? - I was able to stand around and just watch unhassled for about an hour, and I even had an interesting conversation with a guy who didn't actually want to sell me anything (I'd been in the country 4 days - it took me a while to work this out!).