Bathing ghat at Benares (Varanasi)

Steps along the banks of India's sacred Ganges and Yamuna rivers, known as ghats, have long been sites of dense and continuous activity. Devout Hindus come to bathe in the holy water, collect it for drinking or other purposes, deposit the ashes of the deceased, visit temples, or make offerings in the river.

The British landscape painter (and author of nonsense verse) Edward Lear described the ghats at Mathura in an 1874 journal entry:
The views of the City from across the river being very beautiful, — not as a whole — for it is too big for a single subject; but as combining well with lots of foreground subjects — banks, crocodiles, turtles, bathers, and what not.

Elsewhere, he described the people at a ghat at Haridwar (in modern Uttarakhand state):

Then the variety of costumes! New every moment; — some of the Yoghi like painted N. American Indians. The great multitude of bathers is vastly queer! The colours of dresses amazing — women in apricot coloured shawls, — rose coloured, — scarlet, — brown, — (and with the strangest nose-rings, like spoons!) all throwing flowers into the river. It is certainly a most remarkable sight!

The unknown photographer was likely as fascinated by the variety of activities, people, and colors at the riverside as was Lear.