‘They said girls don’t go — but I insisted’: Women kanwariyas undertake arduous yatra, one cautious step at a time

Next to the Kanwar camp are two small portable toilets, surrounded by huge swarms of flies. “There are toilets, but these are not clean… and there is no place to change. So we, the women and girls, do it behind the tents, early in the morning, before the men are up,” Deepa adds.

Personal safety and hygiene continue to be among the top concerns for women kanwariyas as they undertake the Yatra. During this annual monsoon pilgrimage, lakhs of Shiva devotees, dressed in saffron, carry water from the Ganga, mostly on foot, to offer to their local temples. This year, the Ghaziabad administration set up its first women-only Kanwar camp, in Modinagar. It can host around 20 women.

“What about the rest (of the camps)? We have been staying up all night. There is no designated space for children… women,” says Manisha, a kanwariya walking on a Ghaziabad road.

She is undertaking the Yatra with her friend and two toddlers — her child and her friend’s four-year-old. She started from Southwest Delhi’s Mahipalpur, where she lives.

Asked if the facilities at the camps are adequate, she complains, “All camps have washrooms, but they are extremely dirty. We’ve been using restrooms at dhabas and petrol pumps. But most dhabas and petrol pumps on the route are closed, so we really have to look for one that is safe.”

While the scale of the yatra expands each year — helicopter showers, DJ nights, and budgets for camps and other facilities — the women walking this journey continue to be an afterthought.

A video from Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar was widely shared last week. It showed Deputy Superintendent of Police Rishika Singh massaging the legs of an exhausted woman kanwariya. “This is in accordance with the wishes of Respected ADG, Respected DIG, and Respected SSP,” Singh later told reporters.

“I was on night duty in Shamli, along the Uttar Pradesh border. I have been seeing people travelling for many days. When you are taking water from the holy Ganges, and you are travelling such a long distance, discomfort and pain are unavoidable,” she said.

“I saw a woman kanwariya and had a conversation with her. I did what I felt was the right thing to do…,” she added.

At another packed camp, 20-year-old Sagar adjusts the kanwar, a single pole (usually made of bamboo) with pots on either side. A welder by profession, he has a more important role to take care of right now — that of an elder brother.

“I’m accompanying my two 16-year-old sisters — Anjali and Simran. They don’t look alike but they are twins,” he says.

The three siblings are residents of Yamuna Pushta, and this is their first yatra together.
“I won’t lie, it’s tough. They can’t do this yatra alone,” Sagar says bluntly.

“Washrooms are dirty, there’s no separate space for women to rest. They wouldn’t have been able to do it had I not been there.”

His sisters, taking turns to carry the kanwar, nod in agreement. They’re missing school for this, but they don’t seem to mind. “School or no school, this is for our devotion to our god,” Simran says.

But they have to be cautious every step of the way. At one point in Haridwar, the siblings had to abandon the idea of staying in a camp. “We saw the camp, full of men, no space to even sit. No curtains… food being served was not free,” Anjali recalls, and adds, “We had to spend a night on the road, where trucks were passing by — we laid a bedsheet next to bushes. Mosquitoes bit us the whole night.”

Shalini (20) holds her infant son close as she speaks. Her journey began over a week ago, and she has barely slept in the camps. “There is fear of theft… There is fear of being harassed… The men can defecate anywhere, but for women, a clean and usable washroom is a must… I am a devotee. But this journey? It’s difficult for a woman to travel without a man.”

For Chandni, a 13-year-old student from East Delhi, the biggest hurdle has not been the road — it was her family. “Pehle mana kar diya tha. ‘Ladkiyan nahi jaati’ — that’s what Papa said (First they flatly refused… Girls don’t go…),” she recounts.

“But then I insisted. My cousins were going, so why not me?”

She beams as she walks beside her cousins, kanwars swaying with each step — her feet are blistered, and her face sunburnt. “It’s difficult but I’m happy,” she says.

Her elder brother, Anish, a seasoned kanwariya, who is doing this yatra for the 12th time, chimes in: “Earlier, this was not for girls. Now there has been a change. But not so much that they can go alone. I still don’t let them out of my sight.”