Death in motion: walking and embodied encounters in Varanasi

Walking in Varanasi, India, is conceptualised as both a method and an embodied practice, positioning movement as central to a researcher’s situated encounter with death within an active deathscape. Drawing on walking-based autoethnographic fieldwork conducted at Harishchandra Ghat and Manikarnika Ghat, this study examines how understandings of death were shaped through embodied movement, sensory engagement, and proximity within active cremation landscapes. Findings illustrate how death was experienced not as a singular event, but as an unfolding process within cremation grounds, sustained through networks of labour, normalised within everyday social interactions, and extended beyond the physical boundaries of the ghats. The study contributes to tourism research by demonstrating how walking provides a situated means of interpreting and engaging with active deathscapes.