Sunday 25 August 2019

I left at 8am this morning for the 1 hour drive south, to Haridwar. This town is 15km south of Rishikesh, but again built around the Ganges.

Haridwar is Uttarakhand’s holiest Hindu city, and one of the 7 important Hindu pilgrimage sites in India.

At Har-ki-Pairi Ghat, it is thought that Vishnu dropped some nectar and left behind a footprint. This is now a bathing Ghat, where people will come from all over India to dip themselves in the Ganges here.

I was a bit unlucky and it started to rain enroute. The rain hadn’t put off the locals – it was still busy!

That ghat area was busy. People everywhere. Lots of bridges connecting different sections of the river. Cows wandering between the crowds. Monkeys running about stealing food. And lots of people swimming. Or watching others swimming.

After an hour of walking across the various bridges connecting little islands around the Ganges, I found my driver and we started heading back to Rishikesh.

He kept stopping at every single temple. And there are a lot here. They are all fairly new – and many very theme park like! Lots of large plastic characters of elephants and tigers and waterfalls. Very weird. I didn’t bother going around them!

Back in Rishikesh at 11am and luckily the rain had stopped.