Diwali is tonight. The one worth flying for is eighteen days away
Fifteen days after Diwali, on Kartik Purnima, Varanasi does Dev Deepawali — the Diwali of the gods. This year it falls on Tuesday 24 November. Every one of the city's 84 ghats, from Assi in the south to Namo Ghat at the far north end, is lined with earthen lamps and lit at sunset, all of them, at once.
It is the single most photographed evening in India and still, somehow, mostly Indian. If you only have one trip home in you this winter and no family obligation pinning the date, this is the better week to take. Diwali you can do anywhere there are relatives. This you cannot.
Watch it from the water, not the steps. A boat from Assi at about 4:30pm puts you mid-river as the light goes and the ghats come up one after another. The steps are shoulder to shoulder by five and you will see the backs of people's heads. Agree the price before you get in and expect to pay a festival multiple of the usual.
There is almost no fine dining in the old city and you will not miss it. Kashi Chat Bhandar on Godowlia is the institution — the tamatar chaat is the thing, served scalding in a leaf bowl, and the queue moves faster than it looks. Deena Chat Bhandar a short walk away has the other half of the city's loyalty and the argument between them is a century old.
Then Blue Lassi in the lanes behind Manikarnika — a shop the size of a cupboard, open since the 1920s, clay cups, fruit stirred in by hand. It sits on the route the funeral processions take, which tells you something true about the city: lassi and the burning ghats, thirty metres apart, nobody troubled by it.
For a proper sit-down meal, the hotels on the ghats are the answer rather than a compromise. BrijRama Palace at Darbhanga Ghat is an eighteenth-century building with a terrace directly over the river — worth booking for dinner even if you are staying somewhere cheaper.
The dry-fruit box is the Diwali equivalent of a gift card and everyone knows it. It gets passed on, usually within the week, sometimes back to you. Send something that has to be eaten.
In Mumbai that means Suleman Usman Mithaiwala on Mohammed Ali Road for malpua and mawa jalebi, or Ghasitaram's if the recipients are the kind of family who notice the box. In Delhi, Bikanervala is the safe nationwide answer and Evergreen in Green Park is the better one. Varanasi's own contribution is the malaiyo — a saffron milk foam that only exists in the winter months, has to be eaten within hours, and cannot be sent anywhere at all. If you are in the city in late November, that is the thing to look for at dawn.
Whatever you choose, order it from within India for delivery within India. Posting mithai from abroad means three weeks in transit and a customs line, and it arrives as something nobody wants to eat.
Don't move between cities on the 7th or the 9th. Diwali runs Dhanteras on the 6th to Bhai Dooj on the 11th, and the two days either side of Lakshmi Puja are the worst roads and the latest flights of the year. Travel on the 6th, or wait for the 12th.
Anything official is gone until the 12th. Banks, registrars, PAN and Aadhaar centres lose most of the week. The markets open for one ceremonial Muhurat hour on the evening of the 8th and that is the extent of it. If your trip has a job attached — a signature, a property registration, a bank visit — book around that rather than hoping.
And the season behind it is the expensive one. Wedding season opens the moment Bhai Dooj ends and runs to mid-December. Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jaipur book out first, Gulf fares climb hardest, and January — once it all breaks — is the cheapest and emptiest month of the Indian winter.