Kanwar Yatra

Kanwar refers to a genre of religious performances where devotees ritually carry water from a holy source in containers suspended on either side of a pole.

[2] Today, the kanwar pilgrimage to Haridwar in particular has grown to be India's largest annual religious gathering, with an estimated 30 million devotees in the 2023 and 2024 events.

[3][4] Kanwar Yatra is named after the kānvar (कांवड़), a single pole (usually made of bamboo) with two roughly equal loads fastened or dangling from opposite ends.

This practice of carrying Kavad as a part of religious pilgrimage, especially by devotees of Lord Shiva, is widely followed throughout India (see Kavadi).

[10] However, Uttar Pradesh decided to move ahead with the yatra and Supreme Court of India took a suo moto case on the matter.

Shravani Mela is a major festival at Deoghar in Jharkhand, where thousands of saffron-clad pilgrims bringing holy water, from the Ganges at Sultanganj, covering a distance of 105 kilometres on foot and offer it to lord baidyanath (Shiva).

Here till about 1960, the yatra was confined to a few saints, old devotees, and rich Marwaris of neighbouring cities, and the phenomenon has seen considerable rise in the recent years.