Best season - (October–June) Attractions: Nature and wildlife How to reach: Can be accessed by boat through the riverfront of Varanasi Turtle Sanctuary was declared on 21 December 1989.

of India, with a turtle breeding project with its breeding centre at Sarnath where turtles (both herbivores and carnivores) are hatched and reared for one to one and half year and then are left into River Ganges to remove the bio-pollutants like partly cremated and dead bodies directly thrown in the river.

Between 1987 and 2010 around 33,356 turtles were released in the River Ganges by the Kashi Wildlife Division's tortoise breeding centre, Sarnath.

Fishing and any attempt to tamper with the habitat of the animals found in the sanctuary has been declared a cognizable offence in this stretch of the River Ganges, under 1972 Act.

[2] Incidentally, one of the objectives of declaring this area as a sanctuary was to conserve the Nilssonia gangetica, a carnivorous turtle abundant in this region, which helped in scavenging half burnt corpses dumped in this section of the river and eventually aided in cleaning the river and improve water quality.