Kushavarta Ghat

A short walk downstream from Har Ki Pauri and the noise drops by half. The Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar built this ghat in the eighteenth century, on the bank where the sage Dattatreya is said to have stood on one foot in penance, and it counts among Haridwar's Panch Tirth, the five sacred spots. Today it is the ghat of shraddh, the rites for ancestors: old stone, worn steps, families doing something entirely private out in the open. Come at dawn or at lamp-lighting for the riverbank without the aarti crush. Free.

Ahilyabai Holkar's eighteenth-century stone, and river ritual at a walking pace