Varanasi Ropeway (Kashi Ropeway): Route, Stations, Fares & Status

The Varanasi Ropeway: India's First Urban Transport Cable Car, Explained

Anyone who has tried to get from Varanasi Cantt railway station to Godowlia on a festival afternoon knows the problem. The distance is under four kilometres. The journey can take the better part of an hour. Cycle rickshaws, e-rickshaws, autos, cars, cows, wedding processions and several thousand pilgrims all share the same increasingly narrow road, and by the time you reach Godowlia Chowk you have spent more time in traffic than you will spend at the ghat.

The Kashi Ropeway — usually called the Varanasi ropeway or the Varanasi cable car — is the city's answer to that problem, and it is an unusual one. Rather than building a metro underneath a city sitting on several thousand years of archaeology, or widening lanes that cannot be widened, Varanasi is putting its new mass transit line in the air.

When it opens, it will be India's first ropeway built as public urban transport rather than as a tourist attraction or a hill-station link. This guide covers what it is, where it goes, what it will cost, where the project stands, and what it will actually mean for a visitor.

The Project at a Glance

• Route: Varanasi Cantt railway station ⟷ Godowlia Chowk
• Length: 3.75 km
• Stations: five — Cantt, Kashi Vidyapith (Bharat Mata Mandir), Rath Yatra, Girja Ghar, Godowlia
• End-to-end journey time: approximately 16 minutes
• Cabins: 153 gondolas, 10 passengers each
• Towers: 30, ranging from about 10 to 55 metres in height
• Capacity: up to 3,000 passengers per hour per direction; a design target of around 96,000 passengers a day
• Operating hours: planned at roughly 16 hours a day
• Announced fares: ₹10 minimum to ₹50 maximum, distance-based
• Status: under construction and in trials as of September 2026 — not yet open to the public

The Route, Station by Station

The line runs along the main artery from the railway station into the heart of the old city, roughly following the road corridor below it.

1. Cantt (Varanasi Cantonment railway station)

The northern terminus, immediately at the city's principal railway station. This is the single most useful thing about the project: the ropeway begins exactly where most visitors arrive, so a traveller stepping off a train can go straight up to the platform and be near the ghats in about a quarter of an hour. See our transport hubs guide for how Cantt station, the bus stand and the airport road fit together.

2. Kashi Vidyapith (Bharat Mata Mandir)

Serving the Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith university campus and the area around the Bharat Mata Mandir — the temple housing the famous relief map of India carved in marble. A student and commuter station more than a tourist one.

3. Rath Yatra

A major crossing on the Cantt–Godowlia road and one of the busiest junctions in the city. The trial running reported through mid-2026 has focused on the Cantt–Rath Yatra section as a priority corridor, which suggests this stretch is likely to be the first to carry passengers.

4. Girja Ghar

An intermediate point near the landmark church that gives the area its name. Published project documents indicate no passenger boarding or alighting here — it functions as a technical station on the line.

5. Godowlia Chowk

The southern terminus and the one that matters most for visitors. Godowlia is the gateway to the old city: from here it is a short walk to Dashashwamedh Ghat, the Ganga Aarti, the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor and Kashi Vishwanath Temple itself. Godowlia is also the last point motor vehicles can reach; everything beyond is lanes.

Fares

The announced fare structure is distance-based and deliberately kept at public-transport levels rather than tourist-attraction levels:

• Full journey, Cantt to Godowlia: ₹50
• Minimum fare (e.g. Vidyapith to Rath Yatra): ₹10
• Kashi Smart Pass: a 20% discount for regular commuters — bringing the full journey to ₹40 and the short hop to ₹8

For comparison, an auto-rickshaw over the same route typically costs more and takes considerably longer at busy times. The pricing signals the intent clearly: this is meant to be used daily by residents, not experienced once by tourists.

Fares announced before an opening are subject to revision. Treat these as the published intention rather than a guarantee.

Why a Ropeway, of All Things?

It sounds eccentric until you look at what the alternatives were.

A metro was studied and shelved. Varanasi is one of the most continuously inhabited cities on earth, and tunnelling under it is an archaeological and engineering nightmare compounded by a very high water table so close to the Ganga. A light metro on elevated viaduct would have needed a wide alignment and extensive demolition along a road that is already lined with buildings.

Widening the roads is not realistic. The lanes of the old city are the old city; you cannot widen them without destroying the thing people come to see.

A ropeway, by contrast, needs only a series of tower footprints and five station plots. It flies over the traffic entirely, is unaffected by congestion below it, is comparatively quick to build, and consumes very little land. Ropeway urban transit has worked at scale in a handful of cities worldwide, generally in places where terrain or density made conventional transit impractical — which is a fair description of Varanasi.

Where the Project Stands

This is the part that requires honesty. The ropeway has not opened, and the schedule has moved repeatedly.

A broad timeline of what is publicly known:

• 2018–2019: a metro plan for Varanasi is rejected; RITES is asked to prepare a mass rapid transit plan, which includes a ropeway option.
• 2021–2022: the project is developed and tendered. Austrian engineering firms handle the planning; National Highways Logistics Management Ltd is appointed to execute it under the Parvatmala programme.
• December 2022: the construction contract is awarded to a consortium of Vishwa Samudra Engineering and the Swiss ropeway manufacturer Bartholet, on a hybrid annuity model that includes 15 years of maintenance.
• March 2023: the foundation stone is laid. Project cost is reported at around ₹645 crore, with the awarded contract value higher.
• Through 2024–2025: towers and stations go up. Target opening dates of May 2025 and then August 2025 pass.
• December 2025: five stations and 29 towers reported complete, with extensive trials under way.
• Mid-2026: testing reported on the priority corridor from Cantt to Rath Yatra. The Godowlia Chowk terminus — the station visitors care about most — is reported as still under construction.

What this means practically: if you are planning a trip to Varanasi in late 2026, do not build your arrival around the ropeway. Assume you will take an auto or a taxi from Cantt station as everyone always has. If the line has opened by the time you travel, treat it as a bonus. A phased opening — the northern section first, Godowlia later — looks like the most likely path.

What It Will Change for Visitors

Assume for a moment that it is running end to end. What actually changes?

The arrival

The most tiring part of a Varanasi trip for many people is the first hour: stepping off an overnight train into the noise outside Cantt station, negotiating with a driver, and then crawling towards the old city. A 16-minute ride from the platform to Godowlia removes that entirely, and removes the arrival-day negotiation that catches out a lot of first-time visitors.

The festival problem

During Navratri, Dev Deepawali, Mahashivratri and the Sawan Mondays, the road to Godowlia can become effectively impassable. A line in the air is immune to that — though it will also be at its most crowded on exactly those days.

Accessibility

For elderly pilgrims, families with small children, and anyone with mobility limitations, a level boarding platform and a seated cabin is a very different proposition from a cycle rickshaw through Godowlia traffic. This may end up being the project's most meaningful effect.

The view

Nobody planned this as a sightseeing ride, but it will be one. Fifty-odd metres above the rooftops of Varanasi, moving slowly across the whole spread of the old city, is a perspective almost nobody has had before. Expect it to become one of the most photographed things in the city within a month of opening.

What it will not do

It will not get you to the ghats. Godowlia is where vehicles stop and the lanes begin, and the ropeway ends at Godowlia. The walk from there to Dashashwamedh is still the walk from there to Dashashwamedh — which, honestly, is the good part.

It also serves only one corridor. Assi Ghat, Sarnath, the university area and Durga Kund are all off the line and will still need road transport.

Practical Advice for Now

• Check before you plan. Confirm the operating status close to your travel dates rather than relying on any article, including this one. Opening dates for this project have moved several times.
• Have a plan B, which is the current plan A. Prepaid taxi and app-based cabs are available at Cantt station; autos and e-rickshaws are everywhere. Agree the fare before you get in if you are not on a meter or an app.
• Expect crowds at opening. A new ropeway in a city of this size will draw enormous novelty demand in its first months. If you want a quiet ride, wait a season.
• Luggage. Cabin space is limited with ten passengers aboard. Large suitcases may be restricted; check the operator's rules when they are published.
• If heights are an issue, note that the line runs at up to about 55 metres over dense city. The cabins are enclosed, but this is not a low ride.

Fitting It Into a Trip

Whenever it opens, the natural shape of a Varanasi day will not change much — the ropeway just removes friction from the edges of it. Dawn on the ghats and a boat ride as the light comes up; the lanes and the food stalls in our Varanasi food guide through the middle of the day; the Ganga Aarti in the evening. What changes is that getting between the station, your hotel and Godowlia stops eating an hour at each end.

For trip structure, see the 2-day itinerary, the 3-day itinerary, and the full Varanasi travel guide. For where to stay along this corridor, hotels near the ghats and budget stays cover the options — and note that a hotel near Godowlia or Rath Yatra becomes considerably more convenient once the line is running.

A City That Keeps Adding Layers

There is something characteristic about Varanasi solving a traffic problem this way. This is a city that has absorbed every era that passed through it without ever quite replacing what came before — Mughal-era mosques beside eighteenth-century ghats beside colonial civil lines beside the Vishwanath Corridor. Now it is adding a cable car over the top of all of it.

Whether that works as elegantly in practice as it does on paper is something the next couple of years will answer. But the intent is worth noting: not to clear the old city out of the way, but to fly over it and leave it as it is. For Varanasi, that is a fairly sound instinct.

We will update this page as the ropeway's status changes. If you have travelled on it, we would like to hear how it went.