For me, Banaras had always been tied to Bollywood—through films like Raanjhanaa, Masaan, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, and iconic songs like ‘Khaike Paan Banaras Wala’.

Little did I know that the movie I’d actually end up experiencing on my trip would be ‘Banarasi Thug’!

In November 2024, my mom and I took a roadtrip from Delhi to Banaras. It was my mom’s second trip to this city while it was my first.

The Incident

We arrived in the city at about 8PM at night and decided to go to the ghats next day morning for a sunrise boat tour – something I recently started associating Banaras with – Thanks to the numerous Instagram posts.

We started at 5:30 AM from our hotel towards the ghats which was a 25 minute walk for us.

Mom was initially worried that the walk would be through really ‘sunsaan’ roads – but her fears disappeared within minutes. The roads were bustling with people, all moving in the same direction—toward the ghats.

We were closest to Dasaswamedh ghat (which is one of the main ghats) so decided to take the tour from there.

About 10 minutes before we reached the ghat, a young boy approached us asking if we were interested in the sunrise boat tour. He mentioned the cost as 3500 Rs for a private boat which seemed too high to us.

Mom did what she is best at – Negotiating/Bargaining.

We finally sealed the deal at 500 Rs per head for a small boat. The guy said there may be 2-3 more people with us which we were fine with.

By 6:00 AM, the deal was set. We waited at the jetty as the boy coordinated with a boatman, who would be taking us on the tour. He pointed to a small blue boat just pulling in and told us that would be ours.

Before leaving, he asked for the payment. Since we didn’t have cash, we paid via UPI using a code provided by the boatman.

Start of the Issue

However, after making the payment, the boatman informed us that we would board the next boat as the small blue boat was pre-booked by another group.

Thus began the familiar cycle of – ‘bas paanch minute aur’, ‘bas aa hi rahi hai’. Meanwhile the crowd at the jetty kept growing.

With every repeated ‘paanch minute aur’, 6:00 AM soon turned into 6:45 AM. By then, my patience had run out as the sun was about to rise and I wanted to be on my boat tour before it did.

By 7:00 AM, a larger boat arrived, and the boatman directed all of us to board it. This was a shared boat with a fixed fare of ₹100 per person. My mom and I were deeply frustrated, but having paid in advance, we were helpless.

We briefly considered canceling the sunrise tour

altogether—after all, we had already missed the sunrise—and opting for a sunset tour instead.

However, getting our money back was not going to be easy.

When mom asked the boatman to refund our money, he flatly refused, claiming that the UPI account we had paid into wasn’t his. Instead, he said it belonged to the young boy who had originally approached us for the boat ride.

Even after making us sit in the bigger sharing boat, the boatman kept stalling coming up with excuses like ‘kachra fasss gaya hai boat ke neeche’ while pretending to clear it. In reality, he was buying time, so that more people could board the boat as more people would mean more money for him.

By the time we finally set off, it was 7:30 AM, the sun was already high in the sky and there were nearly 30 other people in our boat.

Mom and I were so frustrated and upset that we could not enjoy the boat tour at all.

After Effects of the Incident

The whole incident left a very unpleasant taste in our mouths.

My mom created a huge scene on the boat by arguing with the Boatman, but he remained completely nonchalant, unfazed by our complaints.

The sense of being cheated had completely dampened our spirits. We got off the boat at the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir.

However, even after offering our prayers, we couldn’t shake off the lingering disappointment.

In fact, we had become so wary of the local thugs that we took turns for the darshan, unwilling to even leave our shoes unattended for fear of another unpleasant surprise!

We tried to distract ourselves by going to RamBhandar for the famous Kachoris. Our luck was such that RamBhandar was closed during those days as there was a death in the family.

We then had some amazing kachoris at ‘SatyaNarayan Bhandar’. The kachoris were incredibly fresh and absolutely lip-smacking!

However, even that could not make us get over that lingering feeling of being cheated.

Little bit of Research/Stalking

I did some research on my UPI account and found the name of the person whose account had been used for the UPI payment.

Although we had been cheated for only 800 Rs, it was still affecting us.

After I got the name of the person, I did some stalking on the net and found out that the person was operating boats at Dasaswamedh ghat. We went back to the ghat and started asking around for the person.

A vendor knew him and called him up. The vendor must have assumed that we wanted to give some business to the guy as we had come to the ghat looking for him specifically.

Little did he know of our intent!

Finally after about 15 minutes, the UPI guy appeared and he turned out to be the same boatman who had blatantly denied receiving money in his account.

We confronted the boatman with proof but he simply tried to walk away. Mom even threatened to go to the police and he said “Karlo jo karna hai, koi mera kuch nahi bigaad sakta”. Trying to appear a bit intimidating, I clicked a picture of the boatman, hoping it would make him uneasy. But alas, he remained completely unfazed.

Again, the feeling of helplessness creeped into us.

The Police

It was that last sentence of the boatman – ‘Police mera kuch nahi bigaad sakti’ that got to us.

We walked back to the main chowk and saw some policemen there.

Mom approached them and opened the conversation with “Agar koi humein cheat karta hai toh kya hum kuch kar sakte hai as tourists?”. Surprisingly the police was quite empathetic and asked us to elaborate.

Mom gave the details along with the name of the boatman and I gave the photo of him that I had clicked.

The police admitted that such incidents were, unfortunately, quite common and were tarnishing Banaras’s reputation in the tourism industry. However, they emphasized that action could only be taken if these cases were reported. Since the monetary loss for tourists is usually small, most people choose not to go through the hassle of filing a complaint.

The police guy asked us to wait for 10 minutes and meanwhile circulated the picture to all the boat owners. Within 10 minutes, the police had found the particular boat company that our boatman was associated with and we all walked down to the ghat to nab him and take him to the police station.

I certainly did not expect such a prompt response from the police.

On reaching the ghat, we got to know that the guy was on one of his tours at the moment. The police then called up the owner of the boat and asked him to come to the police station.

We all went to the police station which was in the same vicinity and I was asked to file an FIR.

This was my second FIR in this lifetime! Read about my first FIR here : Butterfly beach – A Survival story

In about 5 minutes of us reaching there, the boat owner showed up, apologising profusely. After spending around ten minutes at the police station, we walked out with the extra ₹800 we had paid, while the police continued berating the boat owner, even threatening to cancel his license.

Though the amount was small – It felt like a huge victory.

We could now finally enjoy Banaras!