Dev Deepawali, Varanasi

Fifteen days after Diwali, it is the gods' turn to celebrate. Legend says that on the full moon of Kartik, the gods descend to Varanasi to bathe in the Ganges, so more than eighty ghats from south to north fill with oil lamps, priests swing brass lamps in the firelight, and thousands of small boats drift slowly between rivers of light. It is the gentlest and grandest night of the oldest living city in the world.