A working bathing ghat
Ganga
Har Ki Pauri, Haridwar, Uttarakhand
Where the Ganga leaves the mountains
The gateway ghat, and the kund where a drop of the amrit is said to have fallen.
- River
- Ganga
- Ghat
- Har Ki Pauri
- Place
- Haridwar, Uttarakhand
- Form of the water
- A working bathing ghat
- Local time
- Asia/Kolkata
The place
Haridwar is where the Ganga comes out of the hills onto the plain, a long way down from Gaumukh. The name is read two ways, Hari-dwar, the gate of Vishnu, and Har-dwar, the gate of Shiva. Both are kept, because the town is the doorway to Badrinath in one direction and Kedarnath in the other.
Har Ki Pauri means the steps of Hari. Set into the ghat is Brahmakund, where tradition holds a drop of the amrit fell as it was carried away after the churning of the ocean. That tradition gives Haridwar one of the four Kumbh Melas. A stone on the ghat is venerated as bearing Vishnu's footprint, and the ghat takes its name from it.
The water past the steps is a channel, drawn off the main stem a short way upstream at Bhimgoda. The main stream runs east of the town, and the same works feed the Upper Ganges Canal, cut in the 1850s and still carrying water into the Doab. The flow figure on this site belongs to the river, not to the channel between the steps.
This is one of the busiest working ghats in the country. The aarti is performed at dusk, and tarpan, shraddha and asthi visarjan go on through the day. A little downstream at Kankhal, the Daksha Mahadev temple keeps the story of Daksha's yajna, the older story of the place and the reason the town was a tirtha before it had a ghat.
Where the figures come from
One number, taken the same way at all six waters.
The cell this site reads for Haridwar sits on the Ganga main stem below the town. The number is modelled discharge in cubic metres a second, published once a day, and it is ranked against every daily value that cell has produced in this same week of the year from 1997 to 2025. The Ganga carries far more water here in a monsoon week than in a dry March, and the percentile shows where today sits without your having to know the numbers.
Where the figures come from
Flow is modelled river discharge from the Copernicus Emergency Management Service global flood model, read at the grid cell covering this reach and published once a day. It is a model rather than a gauge reading, and this site writes modelled beside every number it prints.
Each value is ranked against every daily value that same cell has produced in this same week of the year from 1997 to 2025. That is what the percentile means: one water compared with its own past.
Sunrise, sunset, air temperature and rainfall are read at the ghat's own coordinates rather than at the grid cell. The muhurat windows are the panchang's rules worked out from that sunrise.
Every figure comes from a public source named beside it, and each can be checked against that source.
Attribution
- River discharge: Copernicus Emergency Management Service, GloFAS, served by Open-Meteo, CC BY 4.0.
- Sun and weather: Open-Meteo, CC BY 4.0.
What you find here
The same four things at every water on this site.
- The river's flowModelled discharge for this reach, in cubic metres a second, ranked against 1997 to 2025 for this same week of the year.
- The sunriseSunrise and sunset at this ghat's own coordinates, which is why they differ from every other ghat's.
- The muhurat windowsBrahma, pratah, abhijit and godhuli, worked out from that sunrise rather than copied from a national table.
- The snanThree minutes with this water at the state it is in, at an hour the panchang names, with your own sankalp in your own words.
What this water is kept for
What people do when they stand at this water. Some of it is centuries older than any of the words on this site.
The dawn dip at Brahmakund
The dip itself, taken at first light from the steps at Brahmakund. It is what the ghat is for.
Done by the person at the water
Tarpan
Water offered to the ancestors by name, from the hand, standing in the river. Practice varies by community, and families with a purohit follow his order.
Done by the person at the water
Asthi visarjan
Ashes given to the water at the ghat by the family. It is one of the oldest reasons families travel to Haridwar.
Done by the person at the water
The evening aarti
Performed at these steps at dusk by Shri Ganga Sabha, every evening, for whoever is standing there.
Kept by the place itself
Deep daan
A lamp on a leaf, lit and set on the water from the step.
Done by the person at the water
Days this ghat is known for
Each is reckoned by tithi or by the sun, as noted beside it. Dates are not printed yet: the parva day depends on a panchang, and the site has still to choose the one it will follow.
Timing to be confirmed against the panchang
Kartik Purnima
Dev Deepawali at the ghats, the steps are lit end to end with lamps.
Purnima of Kartik
Ganga Dussehra
Kept as the day of the river's descent to the earth.
Dashami of the bright half of Jyeshtha
Makar Sankranti
A solar reckoning rather than a lunar one, and the beginning of the northward course.
The sun's entry into Makara
Somvati Amavasya
Uncommon, and long kept at this ghat for bathing and for tarpan.
An amavasya falling on a Monday
Who looks after this water
Har Ki Pauri is looked after by Shri Ganga Sabha, which runs the evening aarti and maintains the steps. The Haridwar municipal and district administrations take charge of access at Kumbh and on the large parva days.