Hardwar an important pilgrimage spot. Here, the river Ganga alights from the Himalayas and enters the great North Indian plain. For the Hindu brethren, a dip in the Ganga at Hardwar to ensure their salvation in the hereafter. This place is sacred also for the Sikhs because Guru Nanak Dev paid a visit here. Early during his first odyssey he arrived here at the spot called Har ki Pauri. he found a mass of Hindu pilgrims standing in the waters of the Ganga and offering argha (palmfuls) of waters to the sun in order to quench the thirst of the souls of their ancestors who, they believed, inhabited the sun. The guru also got into the river and started throwing his palmfuls in the opposite direction.
 

Astonished by his queer act, people asked him a to what he was doing . They told the guru that they were slaking the thirst of their ancestors now residing on the sun. The guru, at that, said, he was watering his fields in Kartarpur. The pilgrims laughed at him and said," Ignorant fool ! How can your water reach Kartarpur which is quite a few hundred miles from here"? The guru said, "If yours cab reach the sun that is millions of miles away, why can't mine reach Kartarpur just a few hundred miles from here?" The lesson went home and people gathered around him for a sermon.