Most of our clients arrive in Varanasi in the morning, and I do not propose to go to the Ghat right away. It takes a lot of effort to catch good pictures when you are tired from the flight. We will go to Dashashwamedh Ghat at around 4:30 pm, when the Aarti ceremony will not have started yet. We will get some nice wide-angle shots of the Ghats stairs and the river, as the sky will still be lit. Right at the Aarti time, we will head down the river to the next Ghat to get a nice angle at the fires with minimal crowding. Most photographers I know go straight to Dashashwamedh Ghat to see the Aarti, but I will show you a trick to get great pictures of it without the chaos of other people at the front. As the evening is settling in, we will stay overnight at a heritage hotel nearby.

I will pick you up around 5:15 am to have a nice breakfast. We will depart at around sunrise, as the light on the banks of the Ganges is unique and only lasts for an hour. Our boat will drift lazily upstream, passing by the ghats, where priests, boatmen, and pilgrims are getting ready for the day - it will be the most photographed hour of our tour. Around 8 am, the lighting will start to fail, and we will have a break until the afternoon. I know that trying to get pictures between 10 am and 2 pm on the banks of the Ganges is pure torture, so, instead of wasting your time, I will tell you straight - trust me, and we will have a break until then. In the late afternoon, we will walk for portraits and street photography near the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. The local shopkeepers there are used to me, so they might be quite talkative and willing to strike a pose for your picture. We will also get a look at the Manikarnika Ghat from a respectful distance to capture some documentary shots, as photography there is restricted, and some positions are just inappropriate to take a picture from due to religious beliefs. You will spend the second night at the same hotel.

We will leave for Sarnath at around 7:30 am to arrive at the Dhamek Stupa by sunrise. The drive from Varanasi takes 30-45 minutes, depending on the cantonment traffic conditions. We will get some nice pictures of the stupa, where the bricks are lit from below since the morning sun is low on the horizon - it will be gone around noon. We will have a short visit to the Sarnath Archaeological Museum to get some nicely framed indoor shots of the Ashoka lion capital but only if the management allows photography, so I will double-check the rules beforehand. Around late morning, we will return to Varanasi with some free time before your departure. This is the whole point of this Varanasi Photography Tour Package - to show you the most remarkable hours of sunrise and sunset and have a couple of great evenings at the Ghats, while midday is not the best time for photography.