Vaishnava tradition places the birth of Krishna in a prison cell at Mathura, where his uncle Kamsa had confined his parents to prevent the fulfilment of a prophecy that their eighth child would kill him. The infant was carried across the Yamuna to Gokul the same night and raised among cowherds, and the whole cycle of childhood stories that Braj country celebrates follows from that displacement. The city is therefore the beginning and the return point of the narrative rather than its setting: Krishna comes back to Mathura as a young man, kills Kamsa, and later leaves for Dwarka on the western coast.
Pilgrims work a circuit that takes in the Janmasthan in the city, the temples of Vrindavan a few miles upstream where the childhood is remembered, the hill of Govardhan that Krishna is said to have lifted on one finger, and a long circumambulation of the whole Braj region on foot. Holi at Mathura and its neighbouring villages is unusually elaborate and lasts far longer than the single day kept elsewhere, including the well known exchange at Barsana in which the women of the village drive the men off with staves. The Yamuna itself is an object of devotion here as much as the temples on its bank, and the ghats are used for bathing and for the evening lamp offering.