Lord Shiva’s Kedarnath fully engulfed in snow

This is the current, stunning and marvellous picture of historical Kedarnath Shrine fully engulfed with knee deep snow sent by senior journalist friend Mohit Dimri, which remains closed during the winters and opens in April, May reviving its usual functioning with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims all over the country and the globe thronging in, for Lord Shiva’s Darshan, the creater and destroyer of this Universe.

The climate here is extremely chilling with the usual temperature sliding to minus 7 degrees during noon and crossing – 20 or more degrees during midnight. But what looks interesting and adventurous is the fact that the employees of Nehru Mountaineering Institute (NIM) looking after the affairs of the maintenance and development of Kedarnath and its immediate surroundings are round the clock busy amid the most deadly, treacherous and challenging situations, clearing the area and roads of heaps of snow measuring 2 to 3 feet over ground. Hats off to them.

It may be recalled that during 2013 June 15/ 16 when the entire Kedarpuri including Ram Bada and the Kedar valley was engulfed with the highly devastating deluge due to massive cloud bursts and subsequent bursting of the Chorabaari Lake also called the Gandhi Sarovar, they were the brave and hard working people of the NIM who in the aftermath of this devastating ecological disaster rebuild and renovated the entire Kedarnath vicinity under extreme challenging weather conditions beyond anybody’s expectation with the landing of high tech extremely heavy loaded bull dozers and other machines ferryed at such a towering height through helicopters.

It was a record in itself. Historical Kedarnath temple is situated at 11, 755 feet from the sea level where even during the summers, the weather comes to 2 to 5 degrees during the nights and the running high speed Mandakini and Alaknanda rivers get frozen . Over ten thousand pilgrims from Uttarakhand and several other parts of the country had died during this catastrophic tragedy. Uttarakhand has four historical religious shrines popular world over where millions of pilgrims come to pay their respects and prayers with extreme obeisance to lord Kedarnath, Badrinath, Goddess Gangotri and Yamnotri.

While Gangotri and Yamunotri emerges from the huge himalayan glaciers since time immemorial quenching the thirst and irrigational needs of the entire nation finally converging in Bay of Bengal, the Kedarnathand Badrinath shrines are of immense value for the devotees all around the globe.

A month ago prime minister Narendra Modi had visited Kedarnath Temple for the second time on the day of its closure during the winters and had announced several projects for the over all facelift of Kedarpuri that involved innovative development of inner roads and construction of modernised luving accomodation for the pujaries as well as the pilgrims who visit here from distant parts of the country and the globe including inner roads etc. The work on these projects got badly affected due to the excessive snow fall say the sources which will be resumed after the inclement weather situation improves in the near future. The Kedarnath site and temple fully clad in snow gives the imresson as if a pitch white( bright) silver sheet have been spread in Kedarpuri by Lord Shiva.

SUNIL NEGI