I always had a passion for traveling. There's no bigger university than travel. I was not very much interested in visiting overseas. I wanted to know the length and breadth of India. At the beginning my traveling around was to explore nature but when my interest changed from nature to spirituality, I don't know. I liked to visit very old temples like Rameshwaram, Puri Jagannath, Dwarka and Badhiranath. These were that four Dhams listed by Shankaracharya. At present the char dham of Uttarkashi are Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath.
I had completed all the four dhams quite a number of times, but Kedarnath only once. On 16th June 2023, when the flood tremendous burst were the prime reason for the Kedarnath flood tragedy, 6000 people died, most of them were pilgrims. Heavy rainfall for four consecutive days as well as melting snow aggravated the floods. Many Kedarnath temples are of 8th century dedicated to Lord Shiva.A big boulder, now known as Bhima Shila came along with the flood and stood just behind the Kedarnath temple to divert the waterflow. Thus the miraculous rock came to be known as the Bhima Shila, or Gods own arrow that came in to protect the existance of the religious place.
Apart from the religious beauty, the place has a mystic natural beauty with snow mountains around it and a fresh Himalayan breeze. Adi Shankaracharya's samadhi is right next to the temple. It is believed that this is a place where he attained salvation. According to Hindu legends, the temple was initially built by the Pandavas, who did penance here ti please Lord Shiva. The temple was originally built in the 8th century AD by Adi Shankaracharya, and it is adjacent to the site on an earlier temple built by the Pnadavas. A conical rock formation inside the temple is worshipped as Lord Shiva.
The hall inside the temple contains the statues of the Pandava brothers, Draupadi, Lord Krishna, Nandi in grabha griha, a conical shape rock formation is worshipped.
Adi Shankaracharya revived the temple.
Among the twelve Jyortirlingas, visit to the Kedarnath temple was the most difficult. My sister Gowri and I had booked a travel agency for Char Dham Yatra.
After completing Yamunotri and Gangotri dham, our next goal was Kedarnath dham. Night we stayed at GuptaKashi. The distance between Kedarnath and Guptakashi was approximately 34 km. We woke up early morning at 3 AM from our hotel, after which we were dropped to Gowrikund hot spring on a 9 seater jeep.
From Gowrikund, we took a pony for 4.5 hours along the Mandakini river. It was at a height of 11750 feet, we saw the land slide area on the way.
- Geeta Chakravarthy
Comments
Post a Comment