Ghat

The abrupt escarpment of the western Ghats condenses so much of the moisture of the south-west monsoon

Chunks of wood were being built into funeral pyres on the steps of the ghat that went down into the water; four bodies were burning on the ghat steps when we got there.

And farther south, in the interior of the Peninsula, in the elevated tract from 1200 to 2400 feet above the sea, between the Eastern and Western Ghats

On the steps of the Manikarnika ghat—the holiest of the city’s stepped riverbanks, upon which Hindu dead are cremated—the fires are already lit, and mourners assemble by the hundred to accompany their loved ones at the end.