Akhara Goswami Tulsidas

The Akhara Goswami Tulsidas sits along the Ganges with a plain stone facade that hides a heavy, wooden wrestling pit inside. It marks the spot where the seventeenth-century poet Tulsidas is said to have lived while he composed his version of the Ramayana. Wrestlers still gather on the packed earth floor to practice ancient techniques. They coat their skin in the local soil, keeping a tradition alive that predates the modern city buildings crowding around the riverbank today.