Hotels and districts of Varanasi. Train station area

All the tourist hotels and guesthouses in Varanasi are compressed basically in three main districts of the city.




If we enter the city from the airport, the 1st is located close to the Varanasi train station, the 2nd - is around the Main Ghat (Dasashwamed) - Godowlia / Church Crossing, and the 3d is the Assi Ghat surroundings.


It seems that they are different only location-wise, but each location has a powerful impact on the exposure of the city. Usually visitors come to Varanasi only for a couple of days on their first trip, and the choice of the area where to stay instantly shapes the face of the city, which they will see. 


So first about the train station area. The hotels, that are located both in Cantonement and Lahurabir area, are for those, who 


1) come to Varanasi for a really short stay, not to actually experience the city, but rather to spend the night before boarding the train or flight to another destination.
2) don't really bother engulfing themselves into the atmosphere of the eternal city with all its beggars and touts, cow manure everywhere and old temples, which you can enter only with your shoes off.


Those on a way to another destination will spend the night in some yawnful, but clean Buddha Hotel. Buddha is a twin brother of drab airpport highway hotels in Delhi, between domestic and international terminals. Those who stay there would not go out curious about nightlife in Benares. And we must say, there's actually hardly a place to visit around the hotel, if you dare to navigate the pitch-black alley that leads to and from the hotel. And in the morning they will eat their breakfast and move on with their trip.


The second group of travellers will book the luxurious Renaissance or Taj Ganges - 'a quiet and peaceful getaway from the madness of Varanasi', as its customers put it. It truly is. The high-end Taj is located quite far from the old city, and from the ghats, to have repeated rides back and forth every day. So those who don't want to be bothered, will remain peacefully settled in a place once occupied by a palace. 

Such travellers will probably have an SUV ride to Sarnath, and watch from the boat the evening aarti ceremony at Ganges. They will stare at the ceremony as detached observers, like it is some kind of a Third World tribal show, that apparently has no importance in it whatsoever.  


They will eat some sterilized Indian food from a nice cutlery in the hotel's restaurant (a buffet for just 750 rupees), and have a dignified, yet lonely, walk through a shopping arcade right next to Taj, which keeps all hussle of the city out of its premises by setting up a fence around the shop and a security post at the entrance.


They will see the abridged version of Varanasi, because all its magic, and every single chance to percieve sacred and auspicious nature of the city are hidden inside the labirynth of narrow lanes and scattered around ancient ghat steps to the Ganges, which they will never touch.