Varanasi is not for everyone, and that is fine
We would rather say this plainly than have somebody discover it on arrival.
Varanasi is a working city of pilgrimage that has been doing the same thing for longer than most countries have existed. It has not arranged itself around being visited. The lanes are narrow and crowded, there are animals in them, the river is a place where people bathe and pray and are cremated, and all of that happens within a few hundred metres of each other, in public, without ceremony or explanation.
For a great many travellers it is the most moving place they go in India and the one they talk about years later.
For some it is simply too much, and there is nothing wrong with that. If crowds, or close lanes, or the visible presence of death are things you know you struggle with, Varanasi will not ease you in.
The honest middle path, if you are unsure: two nights, a hotel on the river rather than in the lanes, the boat at dawn, and a guide who explains what you are looking at rather than narrating it. That is usually enough for the place to land without overwhelming.
Say so at the planning stage if you are uncertain. It is a normal thing to raise.
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