Asthal Bohar Math

On the eastern edge of Rohtak — roughly 70 km northwest of Delhi and a quiet world away from the capital's crush — Asthal Bohar is one of northern India's oldest surviving Nath monastic seats.

• The word "asthal" simply means a monastery or resting-place of ascetics, and this one spreads out as a low, whitewashed dera of shrines, pillared halls and shaded courtyards, its calm broken only by temple bells and the low drone of aarti.
• For travellers who have only seen Haryana from the motorway, it is a revealing detour: a working yogic establishment where saffron-clad Nath sadhus still keep the daily rhythm of worship.
• The site's roots run astonishingly deep.
• Tradition credits its founding to the yogi Chauranginath in about the 8th century, placing it within the ascetic lineage of Guru Gorakhnath, the medieval teacher whose Nath order shaped Shaiva yoga across the subcontinent.
• Excavations and stray finds around Bohar have turned up Jain, Nath-Shaivite and Brahminical sculpture, including a celebrated seventh-century image of Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Jain tirthankara — evidence that this patch of the plains was a layered sacred landscape long before the present math took shape.
• Asthal Bohar owes its modern fame to Baba Mastnath, born in 1764 in Bohar village and revered by devotees as a reincarnation of Gorakhnath himself.
• In the turbulent late-18th century he revitalised the decaying math, and his samadhi shrine remains the spiritual heart of the complex, tended by an unbroken succession of mahants.
• The tradition still educates: the sprawling Baba Mastnath University, founded in 2012 next to the seat, carries the saint's name into medicine, ayurveda and the humanities.
• Inside, the draw is atmosphere rather than grandeur — a cluster of small temples, the guarded old idols, palm-leaf and manuscript scriptures, and relics associated with the Nath gurus.
• Time your visit for the annual Baba Mastnath Mela, held on Phalguna Sudi 7 (February–March), when the sleepy dera fills with pilgrims, akhara sadhus and folk performers.
• Vegetarian travellers are on comfortable ground here: as a Nath Shaiva math, the entire premises is strictly pure-vegetarian and alcohol-free, and simple sattvik prasad or langar is often shared on festival days.
• Rohtak town itself leans heavily non-vegetarian on the highway, so plan meals with care — carry water, and treat a hot cup of chai from a trusted mithai shop as your safest quick bite before you drive on.