Bodybuilding was a ubiquitous pursuit in Varanasi. Up and down the river, at any time of day, one could witness men in nothing but loinclothes working out on the ghats, doing pushups, lifting weights, striking muscle-enhancing poses as they admired themselves in cracked mirrors. . . . At first it seemed an odd contradiction, this obsession with the body in a city full of death, but in Hinduism the body is an important connection to God, and gradually I saw that the Indian preoccupation with the physical extended far beyond the bodybuilders. All over the ghats pilgrims not absorbed in prayer busied themselves with the care of their bodies.
— Rosemary Mahoney, The Singular Pilgrim