At Varanasi the Ganges turns north for a few miles, and the city built along that curve is held to stand outside ordinary time, resting on Shiva's trident. Its ghats run for several kilometres, and pilgrims descend them before dawn to bathe facing the sunrise. Two of them, Manikarnika and Harishchandra, are burning ghats where cremation goes on continuously, because to die in Kashi is held to bring release from rebirth altogether. Jonathan Parry's fieldwork among the funeral priests and the corpse-burners describes the economy and the ritual specialists that a city of dying supports, and how uncomfortable that trade sits with the doctrine it serves.
Upstream and downstream the calendar is full of water. The Kumbh Mela, held in rotation at four cities, gathers tens of millions to bathe at Prayag at the auspicious conjunction, the largest religious assembly on earth. Ashes are immersed at Haridwar and Varanasi; sealed pots of Ganga water are kept in households for use at death.
The river's physical condition is the standing scandal of its veneration. Sewage from the cities along it, industrial effluent from tanneries and low dry-season flow have left long stretches unsafe to touch, and the Ganga Action Plan of 1986 and the Namami Gange programme of 2014 have both fallen short of their targets. In 2017 the Uttarakhand High Court declared the Ganges a legal person with rights; the Supreme Court stayed the ruling within months.