Haridwar

Being back down on the plains, and sore after too many long, hard bus rides ithe mountains, I was eager to start taking trains again. But the train station in Chandigarh is a hassle to get to and the ticket counter had a sign saying "Temporarily closed. Inconvenience regretted" so I took another bus instead. It was nice not being shoved from side to side with each turn of a curve, but it was still a long, hard bus ride.

Haridwar is on the Ganga river, right at the edge of the foothills of the Himalaya, in the state of Uttaranchal, to the east of Himachal Pradesh. It is a major destination for pilgrims (basically, Indian tourists who travel around to different holy sites in India, of which there are many). The Ganga is, of course, the most holy river in India, and up here it is still relatively clean, so thousands of people bathe in it (in special areas enclosed by chains, because otherwise people would be swept off by the strong current.)

Every night there in an Aarti ceremony where pilgrims float lotus leaves filled with flowers and a candle down the river. It's a pretty ceremony, but I can't help but think that it all ends up as garbage in the river. But then, Indians in general don't seem to have a problem throwing garbage in their holiest of rivers. Culverts and drainage ditches leading directly into lakes and rivers are notorious dumpsites for garbage.

To an outsider like me, Hinduism strikes me as a very commercial religion. Everywhere you go there are opportunities to spend money in the name of God(s) - a million gift shops selling religious souvenirs. Temples often charge admission fees for tourists, rather than simply providing suggested donation boxes as churches do. Pilgrims are just another form of tourists, and there are millions of Indian pilgrimage sites and thus millions of Indian pilgrim-tourists.

One of the more bizarre things for sale in the souvenir shops are DVDs of Hindi religious pop songs, the voices being totally distorted by synthesizers, with little children dressed up as Gods dancing around and mouthing the lyrics to the songs in front of obviously artificial natural backdrops. There are real child actors in those videos, but they look so strange and bizarre, with such outlandish costumes and audio treatment, and weird sped-up video effects, that they almost look like cartoons.