For many of the students, even those from India, it was their first visit to Varanasi. Many knew of it as a sacred city, a tourist attraction, and place of cultural significance in Hinduism, said Sreekar-Shashank Boddupalli, a master’s student from Hyderabad, India, who graduated in the summer.

They also arrived with preconceived notions of a city that was dirty, chaotic, and not very modern, he said.

However, Boddupalli said, when the team arrived they found a city cleaner than expected. The last five years had brought many changes.

The students talked with shopkeepers, and he said they soon learned that officials had already been working on modernizing the city.

The students narrowed their work to focusing on three topics -- environment, transportation, and tourism – for each of three chosen geographic areas – The Assi Ghat, Transit Hub, and Sarnath zones.

The team visited Varanasi in March during spring break. On that visit, the students got to see major differences in the areas, and gained first-hand knowledge of planning in a developing country, Sivakumar said.

But they also faced challenges.

One was lack of access to quality data. During their visit, the city was in the midst of an election and holidays, which prevented students from meeting with officials and acquiring some information.

And lack of data meant analysis was limited. Sivakumar said all analysis was done at a mile-high level.

Despite lack of original data, the students were able create proposals for three zones.

Boddupalli said they tried various other methods to come up with data. They sourced satellite images, and looked at cities with similar problems to see if they could copy solutions and alter them to fit Varanasi. In some instances, they could, he said.

In one week, they learned a lot about the city, he said, by walking around and meeting people. Pictures are a great way to tell if something is feasible or not. He said they had an idea for a vertical garden on pillars. Once they visited the city, they realized it was possible and they included mock-ups in the website they created for the project.

After the visit, students made adjustments to the proposals for the three zones on which they focused.

Sivakumar described the zones:

• The Assi Ghat Zone is a recently renovated tourist attraction receiving an increasing number of local visitors and international travelers alike. The mouth of the Assi River meets the Ganga here, creating avenues for pollution and solid waste collection.

• The Transit Hub Zone is the region composed of the Varanasi Cantonment Railway station and the Varanasi bus stand. It is an entrance into the city for many, and the sheer volume of passengers the zone handles exceeds its ageing infrastructural capacity.

• The Sarnath Zone is a peaceful, secluded paradise that sits north of Varanasi. Home to one of the holiest sites for Buddhism, Sarnath is an archaeologically protected area with limited non-vehicular connectivity to its sister city, Varanasi.

Proposals for each zone focused on issues such as installing better signage to aid tourists, improving streets and sidewalks for pedestrians, providing cooling in the cities, through things as cool roofs, and helping cities manage waste. The overall goal being growth for the areas.

Sivakumar said that recommendations were forwarded to local authorities through their IIT partners. Their deliverable for the work was a website that detailed the project and proposals.