Varanasi, the beating heart of India.
Few places in the world carry such spiritual strength as Varanasi, the holiest city of Hinduism. Spiritual and chaotic, Varanasi is an attack on the senses from all sides.
Varanasi, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, is one of the oldest cities in the world, a town with a strong Muslim presence and the heart of the Hindu universe. Millions of pilgrims come to this place year after year to bathe in the waters of the sacred river, the Ganges. They also come to cremate their loved ones on the stairs by the river and thus achieving the moksha or liberation from the cycle of reincarnations that produce suffering or Samsara. Very close to Varanasi is Sarnath, the place where Buddha gave his first speech.
It is, therefore, an area where all the great religions of India coexist, a spiritual crucible where, nevertheless, the communitarian tensions burst with a certain frequency.
From the photographic record of Marco Bonilla, the series is a tour of the most representative places of a photogenic Varanasi . It is a journey through the most intimate rituals of life and death; A journey through a labyrinth of ghalis. The cows and saints walk the old alleys of the city in search of illumination, impeding the passing of oncoming cars.
