Place · river-gateway pilgrim town · India
Rishikesh
The pilgrim town on the Ganga at the foot of the Shivaliks in Dehradun district, Uttarakhand, 25 kilometres upstream from Haridwar, where the Ganga leaves the hills and the river's current slows into the plains. Historically called 'Hrishikesha' after a Vishnu temple destroyed by Timur in 1398. The town is the staging post for all four Himalayan Char Dhams and, since the Beatles' 1968 visit to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram, the global capital of yoga tourism — some 400 ashrams run in the town. Lakshman Jhula (1929), Ram Jhula (1986) and the newly built suspension bridge over the Ganga are its iconic structures. ISKCON, Divine Life Society and dozens of other movements run from here.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Ganga pilgrimage; modern ashram movement
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 30.103, 78.294
Connections (2)
- River gateway pairHardvār / Haridwar
The two towns divide one function between them: Hardwar is the older tirtha, a Kumbh city and the gate at which the Ganga reaches the plain, and Rishikesh twenty kilometres upstream is the trail-head from which all four Himalayan dhams are approached. Since the 1960s Rishikesh has also become the ashram belt through which yoga reached the world, so the pair now serves two entirely different sets of visitors from two different centuries.
- Sacred water transferHardvār / Haridwar
The Neelkanth Mahadev temple in the hills behind Rishikesh, thirty kilometres from Hardwar, is where Shiva is said to have swallowed the poison churned from the ocean, and it takes the earliest kanwar offerings of each season. Kanwariyas fill their pots at Hardwar or Gaumukh and carry them here before the great Shravan movement toward the plains begins, which makes this short hill route the opening leg of a pilgrimage that eventually runs the length of north India.
On these journeys
Sources
Rishikesh; Char Dham yatra staging
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