VARANASI, India/WUHAN, China, (Reuters) – A total  solar eclipse yesterday swept across a narrow swathe of  Asia, where hundreds of millions of people watched the skies  darken, though in some places thick summer clouds blocked the  sun.

The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century cut  through the world’s most populous nations, India and China, as  it travelled half the globe. It was visible along a roughly 250  km-wide (155 miles) corridor, U.S. space agency NASA said. In India, where eclipse superstitions are rife, people  snaked through the narrow lanes of the ancient Hindu holy city  of Varanasi and gathered for a dip in the Ganges, an act  believed to bring release from the cycle of life and death.

Amid chanting of Hindu hymns, thousands of men, women and  children waded into the river with folded hands and prayed to  the sun as it emerged in an overcast sky.

“We have come here because our elders told us this is the  best time to improve our afterlife,” said Bhailal Sharma, a  villager from central India travelling in a group of about 100.

But for one 80-year-old woman the trip was fatal. Police  said she died from suffocation in the crowd of hundreds of  thousands that had gathered to bathe in the Ganges.

The eclipse next swept through Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan,  Myanmar and over the crowded cities along China’s Yangtze  River, before heading to the Pacific.

In Hindu-majority Nepal, the government declared yesterday  a public holiday and thousands headed for water.