Ram Ghat, Chitrakoot

Ram Ghat sits on the eastern bank of the Mandakini river in Chitrakoot, the forest-region that the Ramayana describes as Shri Ram's home during a long stretch of his fourteen-year vanvas. Tradition holds that Shri Ram, Sita-mata, and Lakshman bathed at this very bend of the Mandakini each morning during their Chitrakoot years; the stone-paved ghat with its descending steps marks the place where the divine couple is held to have stepped into the sacred water. Today Ram Ghat is the spiritual heart of Chitrakoot — every pilgrim coming to Kamadgiri, Bharat Milap, or Janki Kund begins or ends the yatra here.

The ghat is celebrated for its evening Mandakini Aarti — a smaller, gentler counterpart to the Ganga Aarti at Varanasi. As dusk falls, oil-lamp pillars are lit along the bank, conch-shells sound, and pandits move multi-tiered diyas in slow circles before the river. Pilgrims float small leaf-boat lamps onto the Mandakini and watch them drift downstream into the gathering dark. The Mandakini at Ram Ghat is shallow and still — safe for snan, gentle for children, ideal for the long sit-and-watch that the aarti invites.

The katha

The Ramayana describes that after Shri Ram, Sita-mata, and Lakshman left Ayodhya for the forest, they crossed many regions before settling at Chitrakoot on the advice of the sage Bharadwaj. The Mandakini river — said to flow from the matted hair of Bhagavan Shiva — was their daily bathing-place; the forested Kamadgiri Hill, five kilometres away, was where they built their parnashala (leaf-hut). Tradition holds that at Ram Ghat the family did sandhya, took their morning snan, and offered tarpan to their forefathers. The bank is also held to be where Bharat — Shri Ram's younger brother — first met him after travelling from Ayodhya to plead his return; the meeting-spot, called Bharat Milap, lies just up the path from Ram Ghat.

Several centuries later, the poet-saint Goswami Tulsidas spent long periods at Ram Ghat in deep Rama-bhakti, and tradition holds that he composed parts of the Ramcharitmanas sitting on these very steps. The local belief is that anyone who reads even a few chaupais of the Manas at Ram Ghat receives the same darshan-grace that Tulsidas received here.