From top: Interiors of Haveli Hari Ganga;The thandai-wallah churning his pot with a wooden beater hung with musical bells; A medieval haveli stands proud in Kankhal

Haridwar is primarily about death. For North Indian Hindus, memories of Haridwar are most often, memories of loss. Of sitting by the Ganga watching the remains of a loved one being immersed in its cold grey waters. It’s not an exotic temple town of sadhus and evening artis — though there is all of that too.

It is what a dazed Western visitor will later shakily describe as an ‘intense’ experience. Haridwar demands of you the mind of a yogi — one that sees death and life with the same clear, cold eye; that honours both Destroyer and Creator in one unbroken breath. And later, you will find, as you hurtle back to Delhi on the evening Shatabdi, that your spirit is in a clear and lucid space, a step removed from the tangled world of maya.

But first you need a place to stay — preferably one beside Ma Ganga. The town has scores of ashrams and dharmshalas where the true seeker may stay for Rs 100-Rs 200 a day, if he promises to abstain from sex and alcohol, though marijuana — Lord Shiva’s favourite toke, is not frowned upon.

But for those who like their dose of reality a little cushioned, there is the matchless Haveli Hari Ganga — a period mansion with rooms overlooking the rushing, grey river. Run by the erstwhile royals of Pilibhit, a principality in eastern UP, the 90-year-old Haveli Hari Ganga is one of the family’s several country homes.

It was also common for wealthy Marwari merchants to build dharamshalas in Haridwar, investing in good karma in direct proportion to Lakshmi’s benevolence upon their businesses. Leaning into Haridwar’s winding roads are the flat facades of these early 19th century dharamshalas. Inside, set around a courtyard and several storeys high, are a warren of small rooms for pilgrims. There are Gujarati, Baniya, Vaishnav, Bengali and every other dharamshala, each a small chattering ghetto with its own unique smells, accents and food.

The bazaars of Haridwar are archetypal exotic India — all colour, chaos and crush. Haridwar’s background score is the modern tinny remix of the gayatri mantra played in a mind-numbing loop from every shop, or a Ganga Maiya video song from a Hindi film in which a small-time Bollywood heroine heaves sexily into the camera in a spasm of religious rapture. You can happily browse all day among the religious baubles — the japmalas made of tulsi seeds, fake rudraksh, fake sandalwood, and fake coral beads. There are fake kasauti stones, fake shilajeet, fake antique coins and mounds of fake sindoor.

I buy a black, natural Narmada shivling, polished to phallic proportions by the roiling passions of the river goddess and a lovely warm loi spun from pure unbleached Garhwali sheep-wool. I have moments of flooding nostalgia when I see the thandai-wallah churning his pot with a wooden beater hung with musical bells, and huge kadhais full of frying jalebis and kachoris, and thick bubbling rabri.

While most foreign visitors prefer the more tourist-friendly Rishikesh, there are a few backpackers on the streets here. Tanned and tattooed blondes sport salon dreadlocks and spangled bra-straps, while their trailing entourage of leering yokels proffers imaginative suggestions that they mercifully don’t understand.

Every so often you pass a man cradling in his arms, as you would an infant, a cloth wrapped bundle. These precious bundles are the ashes of loved ones brought to Haridwar on their last journey, to be washed down the Ganga. I watch one such ritual and it is that unapologetic mix of callousness and piety, avarice and prayer that marks much Hindu ritual.

Even as the tearful family watches and the priest intones, his assistant scrabbles through the rubble of small bones, searching for such coins and jewelry that may have escaped the sharp eyes of the priest who cremated the body. What he finds he ties up into the hem of his dhoti, resembling nothing so much as a crouching, shuffling vulture.

Nearby sits a French woman whose dying mother in faraway Provence had expressed a wish to see the Ganges before she died, a notion that seized her after seeing a particularly affecting programme on Discovery Channel. So her daughter Odette has now travelled across the world to Haridwar to cast her mother’s wedding ring into the river. But barely does she lean forward to throw it, that an urchin dives in and snatches it before it even touches the water, and bears it away whooping in triumph. As Odette stares helplessly after him, her streaming tears fall unchecked into the holy Ganga.

Evening arti on Triveni Ghat is Haridwar’s shining climax when 21 separate brass lamps are lit by temple priests, temple bells ring out and the river burns with hundreds of diyas set afloat on the swift flowing current. The deafening din of the bells leaves no room for coherent thought, forcing the deities out of their celestial musings, dragging their attention to earth. For a little while, every evening at Haridwar, man and God lock gaze, trapped together by the fierce energy of sound, rushing water, flame and fervour.

I am abducted by two dashing young pandas with pierced ears and janeu threads across impressive abs. Extortion is the name of the game, and Pawan and Himanshu talk hard and soft in turns, bullying and backing-off in a well-practiced routine. At the end of it, I have performed the arti — turning the ceremonial lamp with 1011 blazing wicks.

I have performed a Parvati puja in pure, if uncomprehended, Sanskrit, I have smeared sindoor in my parting for the first time since my wedding-day, I have prayed for the well-being of all my family, I have drunk Ganga-jal and dread to imagine what else, I have paid for the feeding of 51 Brahmins, and my wallet is lighter by half. Willy-nilly I have been purified.

Haridwar is a town consecrated to the business of religion — and certainly there is no other religion in the world in which the pursuit of commerce is as worthy a goal as any other. In popular Hinduism, the goddess of wealth is no lesser than the goddess of wisdom in the spiritual scheme of things.

But moving away from the main ghats to Kankhal, the older part of Haridwar, one sees a quieter, greener, more aesthetic aspect of this temple town. Sitting astride the motorcycle of a jean-clad baba I visit Kankhal. Kaushal Kaushik is a bona fide baba with his own government-allotted gufa in the Upper Himalayas, where he spends seven months of the year meditating. (One learns something amazing everyday — I had no idea the Government of India was in the business of allotting official caves to meditating yogis! ).

At Kankhal, my Yamaha-borne yogi shows me clean, quiet ancient temples, akharas and muths in beautiful medieval buildings and also the sprawling green campus of the famous Gurukul Kangri University. I glimpse for the first time, the solid edifice behind the froth and flotsam of Hindu religious practice.

Ready reckoner

Distance: 220km from Delhi by road
Where to Stay: Haveli Hari Ganga.
Call +(91)(11)-46520000 to book.
email to info@leisure hotels.in.hariganga@sancharnet.in.
Website: www.havelihariganga.com