North India · Haridwar, Gaumukh; Pura Mahadev, Augharnath, KashiFolk
When the rains come the roads out of Haridwar fill with men in saffron carrying water. Each has a pole across his shoulders with a pot at either end, decorated and never allowed to touch the ground, and in the pots is Ganga water drawn at Haridwar or higher up at Gaumukh or Gangotri. They walk it home, to Pura Mahadev near Baghpat, to Augharnath at Meerut, to Kashi, and pour it over the linga on the dark fourteenth of Shravan. The custom was small until the late 1980s and is now one of the largest gatherings in the world; Haridwar counted about thirty million carriers in 2023–24. The tellings that explain it, which the research could not source, connect the water to the poison in Shiva's throat: the gods once cooled him with the Ganga, and the pilgrim does it again.
East India · Sultanganj (Bihar) to Deoghar (Jharkhand)Folk
In the east the water is taken from the Ganga at the Ajgaibinath temple in Sultanganj and carried a hundred and five kilometres on foot to Baidyanath at Deoghar, the whole road chanting Bol Bam; the month-long Shravani Mela brings millions to the jyotirlinga.
What is different here:
Different river-point, shrine and route; the same act of carrying.
Households that cannot walk keep the month by fasting on its Mondays and pouring water and bilva on the nearest linga; Tarakeswar in Bengal fills every Monday. The sixteen-Monday vow and the Tuesday worship of Mangala Gauri in the same month were not confirmed.