Haridwar - Holy city

As we climbed into the air-conditioned car with Devendra again he explained that we'd need to take a detour to Haridwar as the traffic was super busy. We took a road through forests and woodland, including the Rajaji Corbet National Park, we drove along side a huge canal and negotiated flooding as we crossed rushing water heading for the Ganges. We saw hydro-electric power plants and Devendra explained that sometimes it was possible to see elephants at the other side of the canal. We saw lots of monkeys as usual, but sadly no elephants! We passed a couple of bridges swarming with swallow like birds and lots of people watching them, before eventually coming to Haridwar.

Devendra took us straight to the main Ghat area of the second most holy city in India, it was one of the busiest days of the year. A festival day where lots of people have a holiday and spend it heading for Haridwar with their family. The fact that it's so busy attracts lots of people begging, Devendra explained that many of them are professionals. The ghat was amazing, full of people, as many as 50,000 people per day during this festival weekend. Towards the back of the area was a big building with a tower, curious I asked Devendra what it was. It's a government building with a watch tower, the ghats have metal constructed walkways to attempt to safely direct visitors and the tower watches over this along with the help of cameras and CCTV.

Haridwar didn't feel that holy, it felt like it was bringing out the worst side of things to me. But then there was the celebratory aspect of the fesival, the towering demon effigies that later would be set fire to and followed by fireworks. The hustle and bustle around the temples, the ritual and the crowds of Sadhus.
It wasn't long before Devendra was putting us on the train back to Delhi, including our 'in flight' evening meal! The porter lugging our bags to the train, they do work so hard those guys! And amongst so many people who actually live at the railway station, largely it looks like they're having a picnic under the stairs, when in reality they have nowhere else to go. Ask me about the 'incident' next morning with a couple of the porters!! We arrived at Africa Avenue Hotel by 1am ready for an early get up heading for Agra, so tired I didn't take any photos of the hotel, but it was very nice. They packed us off with a little breakfast box, mostly boiled eggs and bananas, but we also had to look forward to the 'in flight' meal on the Agra train too!!