Bathers by the Varanasi ghats ... but beware, this city is no beach resort. Picture: Andrew Price

There's water, coconuts and beach umbrellas, but if Varanasi is a beach resort, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Varanasi is famed for its universities, musical traditions and silk-weaving. But it is ancient ties with Shiva, Lord of the Universe, that make it one of the holiest cities in India.

The inky-black Ganges is still very much the centre of life (and death) in Varanasi. Wandering through the narrow alleyways of the old city is a major pastime for visitors, as are the ghats, where the spectacle of people washing, bathing and praying in the river will wear through your camera's memory card almost as surely as drinking the turgid water will kill you.

On the subject of death, if you happen to find yourself in an area where the air is thick with ash and an odour so foul it defies words, you've probably discovered one of Varanasi's infamous burning ghats, where bodies are publicly burned on funeral pyres before being cast into the river in a propitious ceremony said to end the cycle of life and death. Lunch, anyone?