Varanasi, India, a city on the shore of the river Ganges, is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, and the holiest of the seven sacred cities in Hinduism. It’s believed that if one is cremated in Varanasi, and their ashes are released into the sacred and purifying water of the Ganges, their reincarnation cycle will end and they will reach Nirvana. Every day more than 100 bodies are cremated on wooden pyres along the river’s edge in this largest auspicious cremation ghat.