As I started out that December morning along the riverfront at Benares, the long arch of river, the cremation ghats, and the towering buifdings stretched as far as the eye could see, like a mighty encrusted bow catching the morning sun and embracing the wide, empty sandbank across the river to the east.

Passing a woman squatting in front of her fragile hut of rushes, roasting chapattis on the usual concave brown metal disc over her small fire, I leaped across the trickle of the Asi, which gives Benares the latter half of its Indian name of Varanasi.