WHERE THE RIVER TEACHES YOU TO LET GO

People don't travel to Varanasi because it's beautiful.

Not in the way Paris is beautiful.

Or Venice.

Or the Amalfi Coast.

You don't come to Varanasi searching for elegant cafés, luxury shopping or postcard-perfect streets.

You come because something inside you is searching for an answer.

For more than three thousand years, pilgrims have made their way to the banks of the Ganges believing that this ancient city holds something no other place on earth can offer.

Not certainty.

Not miracles.

But understanding.

For Hindus, Varanasi is the city of moksha—the liberation of the soul from the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. It is a place where life and death exist side by side without apology.

Where funeral fires burn beside children flying kites.

Where pilgrims bathe in sacred water as temple bells ring across the river at dawn.

Where every sunrise reminds you that endings and beginnings are often the same thing.

I understood none of this when I first began planning my journey. I wasn't traveling to Varanasi because I was Hindu. I was traveling because grief had quietly placed the word moksha in my path.

After losing Bruce, a series of extraordinary coincidences involving seagulls eventually led me to a photograph of seagulls flying across the Ganges at dawn.

That single image became the title of my novel, 'Seagulls on the Ganges'.

Long before I ever reached India, part of my heart had already traveled there.

Perhaps this journey had always been waiting for me.

Every pilgrimage deserves a sanctuary.Mine was BrijRama Palace.

Perched high above Darbhanga Ghat, its ochre walls have watched centuries of pilgrims arrive by river.

The palace is one of the oldest buildings on the ghats, yet stepping inside feels less like entering a hotel than crossing into another century. Greek columns stand comfortably beside Indian craftsmanship. Hand-painted ceilings. Marble floors polished by generations. Carved timber doors. Every room quietly honors the building's remarkable past without sacrificing modern comfort.

I have always believed the best hotels don't distract you from a destination.

They deepen your understanding of it.

BrijRama does exactly that.

The journey there begins not with a taxi...but with a boat.

Our driver met us at the airport before weaving through the colorful chaos of Varanasi's streets until the road simply stopped. The river takes over from there.

Our luggage was loaded onto a traditional wooden bajra, and slowly we drifted along the Ganges towards the palace.

By the river's edge, local men bathed, while the women washed clothes.

Priests, in bright orange costumes, faces painted white, prayed.

Children ran fast, holding tight to paper kites flying high above the chaos.

Arriving by river somehow felt right. After all, this is how pilgrims have always arrived.

Steep stone steps rise from Darbhanga Ghat to the palace entrance. Having recently undergone knee replacement surgery, I wondered if I'd made a terrible mistake. Then I discovered one of the palace's most thoughtful details: a discreet lift carries guests from the ghat to reception before continuing quietly through the hotel.

Inside, its grand and opulent.

I stayed in the Maharaja Suite overlooking the Ganges.

It was spacious. Elegant.

A four-poster bed dressed in crisp white linen.

Indian tapestries.

Ceramics

Fresh flowers.

Daily sweets.

Tea waiting each afternoon by a comfortable armchair.

But my favorite space at the hotel was the balcony that ran the entire length of the front of the hotel and overlooked the river.

Morning.

Afternoon.

Evening.

I found myself returning there again and again.

Sometimes with tea.

Sometimes with my journal.

Sometimes with absolutely nothing at all.

From that extraordinary vantage point, the Ganges becomes an endless theater of humanity.

Boats drifting silently across the water.

Locals descending the stone steps to boats carrying flowers and tiny floating candles.

Priests in saffron robes moving slowly through the crowds.

Laundry dancing in the breeze.

Temple bells echoing from somewhere beyond sight.

Then, the seagulls.

Watching them wheel across the river at dawn, I felt something I'd imagined for years finally become real.

Some moments in travel feel strangely familiar, as though you've lived them long before they actually happen.

A story told to me by an Indian taxi driver in Melbourne many years before I needed to understand coming alive.

Breakfast each morning overlooked the river.

Fresh fruit.

Warm Indian breads.

Excellent coffee.

And conversations.

Why had we come.

One morning I found myself speaking with pilgrims from England.

Another with a family from southern India.

Another with travelers from Japan who had dreamed of visiting Varanasi for decades.

Very few people came to BrijRama merely for a holiday.

Almost everyone had come searching for something.

Some sought faith.

Some sought understanding.

Some simply wanted to witness one of humanity's oldest living spiritual traditions.

By the end of breakfast, strangers often felt like companions.

Evening meals celebrated the rich traditions of vegetarian North Indian cuisine. No meat appeared on the menu.

It didn't need to.

Fragrant dals.

Spicy curries.

Fresh breads.

Delicately spiced vegetables.

Every meal seemed to reflect the philosophy of the city itself—simple, generous and deeply connected to tradition.

Long after dinner had finished, guests lingered on the terrace watching the changing colors of the river below.

Nobody seemed in a hurry to leave.

Perhaps Varanasi quietly teaches you that too.

People often ask me whether Varanasi is worth visiting.

My answer usually surprises them.

I tell them it depends.

If you're searching for polished perfection...probably not.

If you're looking for somewhere that will gently rearrange how you see life...absolutely.

Varanasi asks you to sit beside life's greatest mystery instead of looking away from it.

To accept that grief and joy can occupy the same riverbank.

That endings can become beginnings.

That letting go isn't forgetting.

It's loving differently.

Standing on the balcony at BrijRama Palace on my final morning, watching the first light spill across the Ganges, I realized something.

I hadn't traveled all the way to India simply to see the seagulls.

I'd traveled there to understand why they'd found me.

Sometimes the world's greatest journeys don't take us somewhere new.

They quietly return us to ourselves.

And sometimes...they begin with a river.

from BECOMING SOLO : a memoir by Julie Stafford

BRIJRAMA PALACE