By 6 a.m. on August 9, Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar was already a wall of saffron. Steam rose off the Ganga in the early light as men and boys ranging from their teens to their late 60s – barefoot, dressed in T-shirts bearing images of Hindu gods, speakers strapped to bamboo kanwars blaring remixed bhajans – waded into the river that Hindus believe is holy.By the afternoon, these men had become a river of their own. They flowed down National Highway 58, headed back to their homes, mostly across Delhi, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Some were travelling as far as Jammu, Rajasthan, and Bihar, walking hundreds of kilometres with pots of Gangajal (water) balanced on rods across their shoulders: the kanwars.Among the 50 million that the Uttarakhand government said came to Haridwar to gather water, was Rajat Singh, 21. A Rajput and a first-time kanwariya, or carrier of the kanwar, from Kathua in Jammu, Singh began his 600-km journey on July 17. He walked 25-30 km every day and slept in roadside camps for 26 days.Singh dropped out of college two years ago and has not been able to find a job. He feels the weight of his responsibility to support his family. His father owns a marginal farm in the Bani hills, but is unable to support a family of five, including Singh’s mother and two younger siblings. Amid the uncertainty around his employment, Singh decided to start blogging. His Instagram profile, which has 41,000 followers, describes him as a ‘kattar Hindu’ (staunch Hindu). He has 99,000 followers on Facebook.During his 26-day Kanwar Yatra, he blogged daily, documenting his journey on social media, mostly through reels set to remixes of devotional songs and timestamped with mile markers. He gained 10,000 followers during the journey.“Initially, I used to blog about some scenic places near my village, but that hardly worked. I gained over 10,000 followers when I completed the Amarnath Yatra for the first time, three years ago. The second time, this number crossed 15,000 when I visited Himachal Pradesh’s Bharmour for the Manimahesh Kailash Yatra,” he said.This time, he knew exactly what he had to do: document everything – picking up the Gangajal, carrying the water, walking barefoot, and making sure it didn’t touch the ground before he offered it at the temple.He has sketchy details on the pilgrimage’s origins and traditions though. “Maybe I would know that from mythological books,” he says, adding, “I am not well-versed in Hindi and Sanskrit. We were taught Urdu rather than Hindi in school,” he explained. Singh is one of at least 50 people The Hindu spoke to at the Haridwar ghat, where between 2 and 4 million descended, to scoop up river water each day, from July 30 to August 11. Like him, most did not know the history of the yatra, nor had they paused to question its now Mardi Gras-like vibe. In some aspects the kanwariyas were like the youth from the protests at Jantar Mantar. Both worried about the future and jobs, and were adept at using social media. But the kanwariyas deferred to the state, and celebrated what they saw as the government taking care of them, not seeing themselves as a vote bank.