Editor's Letter: Varanasi & Dev Deepawali 2025

Dear reader,

There are festivals that you watch, and festivals that you enter. Dev Deepawali in Varanasi is, at first glance, the first kind. Every November, on the full moon of Kartik, the city lights its riverfront with lamps, and the images that travel around the world afterwards show a great glowing crescent seen from the water. It looks like something to stand back from and admire. This issue is an argument that it is the second kind: a festival you understand only by walking into it, slowly, over several days, on foot.

In 2025 Dev Deepawali falls on Wednesday 5 November, about two weeks after Diwali. For this November issue of Travel Viewpoint we have put together a set of pieces that, taken together, describe a trip rather than an evening.

Why Varanasi, why now

We chose Varanasi for November because Dev Deepawali is one of the most beautiful nights in the Indian calendar, and one of the most misunderstood by travellers. It is often sold as a single spectacle, best seen from a boat. The reality is richer and also more demanding. The crowds are vast, the old city restricts traffic, the boats crowd the water, and it is easy to leave having seen mostly the backs of other people’s heads. Yet the same week offers some of the gentlest experiences Varanasi has: dawn bathing on the full moon, lamps in neighbourhood lanes, priests at work on quiet ghats, and the strange peace of the morning after.

What is in this issue

We begin, in “The ghats the night before, not only the night of”, with the case for arriving early and walking the riverfront on the eve, when the festival is being prepared and there is still room to move. “A boat you should not book” is our frank piece on the river on festival night: which kind of boat to avoid, and why you might choose not to take a boat at all.

“The old city in the afternoon” takes you behind the ghats, into the lanes at the hour when they are easiest to read, while “What the lamps do to the lanes” follows the lamps away from the river and into doorways, shrines and windowsills. “Three nights is the whole trip” pulls these ideas into a simple plan.

Our guest slot this month, “A priest’s morning, told by a guest”, is a contributor’s account of a morning with a family of ghat priests, and is one of the most moving pieces we have run in some time. “Silk, not a shopping list” is about Banarasi weaving as a craft rather than a souvenir. “Dates and the crowd calendar” is the practical page: when things happen, how crowds build, and what to check. “One village ghat upriver” heads south out of the city to the quieter riverbanks, and “The photograph from the steps” closes the issue with advice on photographing the festival among the people rather than above them.

What readers tell us

The letters we receive from readers who have been to Dev Deepawali tend to follow the same arc. Many arrived on the afternoon of the full moon, could not get a car anywhere near the river, walked the last stretch with a bag over one shoulder, and found every step at Dashashwamedh already taken. They watched the lamps from the back of a crowd and felt a little cheated. And then, almost always, comes the second half of the letter: the next morning, sitting on a quiet ghat among the burnt-out diyas while pilgrims bathed in the mist, the festival finally reached them. Much of this issue grew from those letters. Our writers have tried to give you the version of the week that those readers wished they had been given: earlier, slower and closer. If you have already been, we hope you will recognise the city in these pages; if you have not, we hope they save you a disappointing first evening and give you a better second morning.

A note on respect

Varanasi is a sacred city and a place where people come to grieve, to pray and to die. Its cremation ghats are not a sight. Its rituals are not performances. Several of our writers return to this point, and I want to underline it here. Ask before you photograph. Step aside for processions. Keep your camera down at Manikarnika. Do not let anyone sell you a “special” puja you did not seek. The city is generous to visitors who come with humility, and it closes up to those who come only to consume it.

A note on facts

We have tried to be careful with dates, rules and history. Festival timings in a lunar calendar can shift, and traffic and boat rules around Dev Deepawali are set each year by local authorities. Where we are not certain, we say so, and we ask you to check official notices close to your travel date. We do not print prices for boats, rooms or silk, because they change too fast to be useful and because we would rather you agree a fair price in person.

Photographs to come

This issue goes out with words first. Our photographs from the ghats and lanes will follow, and we hope they will show the city as our writers describe it: not only the great sweep of lamps but the hands that light them.

Before you go

If you take one thing from this issue, let it be time. Give Varanasi at least three nights for Dev Deepawali. Walk at dawn. Sit on a step in the afternoon. Let the city show you how the festival is made before you see it at its height. You will find, as so many of us have, that the night of the lamps is only the brightest moment in a much longer, quieter story.

Thank you, as always, for reading, and for travelling thoughtfully. If you go to Varanasi this November, write and tell us what you saw; the best letters may find their way into a future issue.

Warmly,

Khushi Anand, Editor