VacationSelector

London or Varanasi?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Big Ben and Westminster Bridge, London
London

Photo: AXP Photography, Pexels License

Rowing boats below the ghats in the morning light, Varanasi
Varanasi

Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Your match

London
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on nightlife and families with your weighting.

Varanasi
40
match

Wins on prices with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

LondonVaranasi
Beaches & swimming. London leads by 21 points.21
Food & drink. London leads by 29 points.29
Culture & sights. London leads by 14 points.14
Nightlife. London leads by 78 points.78
Nature & outdoors. London leads by 39 points.39
Day trips. London leads by 48 points.48
Good for families. London leads by 77 points.77
Getting around. London leads by 57 points.57
Shopping & style. London leads by 40 points.40
Affordability. Varanasi leads by 77 points.77
Live music & performing arts. London leads by 40 points.40
Wellness & relaxation. London leads by 10 points.10
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: London and Varanasi.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulyLondonVaranasi
Daytime high24 °C35 °C
Night-time low14 °C27 °C
Rainfall in the month46 mm249 mm
Sunshine7 hours a dayNo figure
Daylight16 hours a day14 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Varanasi
24
29
35
41
43
41
35
33
32
32
28
24
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Varanasi
12
14
10
11
23
110
249
200
146
34
2
5
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Varanasi
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Varanasi
No sunshine record

Where the figures come from

Varanasi has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). Varanasi: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonVaranasi
MumbaiBOM, NMI
9 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 10 m
€147-164
VNS · 21 km
New DelhiDEL
8 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 25 m
€121-127
VNS · 21 km
BengaluruBLR
10 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
VNS · 21 km
HyderabadHYD
9 h 45 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
VNS · 21 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 20 m
€433-468
1 stop
VNS · 21 km
SharjahSHJ
7 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
3 h 55 m
€368-384
VNS · 21 km
ChennaiMAA
10 h 20 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
VNS · 21 km
AhmedabadAMD
8 h 45 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
VNS · 21 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-10 to 2026-12, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureLondonVaranasi
Official languageEnglishHindi, English
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Indian Rupee (INR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCM230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+5:30
Emergency number112 or 999108 or 112
Elevation4 m76 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre223 non-stop destinationsLal Bahadur Shastri International Airport (VNS)21 km from centre16 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days-

By the numbers

MeasureLondonVaranasi
City population8,799,7281,198,491
People per km²5,59814,598
Museums within 10 km2152
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London or Varanasi somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.