"Benares (Varanasi) is older than history, older than tradition, older even than
legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together." -Mark Twain
A night train away from Delhi is the holy city of Varanasi.  This is one of those cities that we could just feel how special they are.  Mark Twain's quote above states this feeling well. I guess sometimes it's just best to borrow from genius writers.

Varanasi is one of the oldest and holiest cities in the world.  It is culturally significant to Hindus, Buddhists and also Jains.  For Hindus, over a million devotees a year make the pilgrimage to Varanasi to bathe in the Ganges river.  Buddhist also pilgrimage to Varanasi to the sight where Siddh?rtha Gautama (Buddha) gave his first sermon.

No matter where we turned we saw something to capture.  Between Meggan and I, there was a rarely a minute that went by without taking a photograph.  Even with the hundreds of photos, this is a place that must be experienced in person to really appreciate.  Here's our best effort to share Varanasi with you through photographs, broken into two parts, this is part 1: