Rin Mochan Kund

Rin Mochan Kund is a small, quietly revered bathing tank tucked along the outer Govardhan parikrama, a short distance from Govardhan town roughly 22 km west of Mathura.

• It is a place pilgrims reach on foot rather than a monument they arrive to see — a stone-edged pond with a few steps down to the water, a modest shrine or two on the bank, and the steady traffic of barefoot parikramavasis who pause here between the longer, more famous stops of Mansi Ganga and Kusum Sarovar.
• Its power lies not in scale but in a specific promise carried in its two names: rin mochan, the loosening of debts, and papmochan, the washing away of sin.
• In Hindu thought a person is born owing three rin — deva-rin, the debt to the divine; rishi-rin, the debt to the sages and teachers; and pitri-rin, the debt to one's ancestors.
• Local Brajwasi tradition ties the kund tenderly to Krishna's own family: it is said that when Krishna returned from Dwarka to the Braj of his childhood, he performed tarpan — the offering of water to the departed and to the ancestors — at this very kund alongside Nanda Baba, Mother Yashoda and his elder brother Balram.
• Because tarpan is the classical rite for settling the ancestral debt, a reverent bath and the offering of water here are believed to lighten a pilgrim of all three rin and of accumulated papa.
• As always in Braj, this is devotional tradition to be received with faith, not a claim of literal history.
• Physically the kund is unassuming, and honesty serves the traveller better than inflation: expect an ordinary masonry tank whose cleanliness varies with the season and the crowd, ringed by simple structures, best appreciated for its atmosphere and its place in the ritual rhythm of the parikrama rather than for grand architecture.
• On a quiet weekday morning it can be deeply peaceful; on Kartik Purnima, Guru Purnima or Govardhan Puja it fills with pilgrims.
• For the vegetarian traveller, Govardhan and Braj are pure-vegetarian by long custom and municipal norm, so the surrounding food is reassuringly meat-free.
• One firm caution, however: Mathura-Vrindavan is one of India's heaviest bhang (cannabis) belts, and roadside thandai or lassi near temple lanes and around Holi and Mahashivratri may be laced with bhang and looks almost identical to the ordinary drink.
• Never accept thandai from an unknown stall.
• Carry your own water and a little prasad; for a proper sit-down meal, plan on the trusted pure-veg, egg-free kitchens back in Mathura or Vrindavan.
• Come with clean intentions, a covered head, and the unhurried patience the parikrama asks of everyone who walks it.