‘Mourning for the dead, thankful for our lives’: First person account of journey to Kedarnath

Kedarnath (Uttarakhand), October 18

Advertisement

An overnight train journey, an eight-hour drive through vertiginous roads and an eight-minute helicopter ride to the abode of the gods.

On Tuesday, as news came in of a helicopter crash killing seven people in the very mountains I was in just weeks ago, I relived in vivid detail my own pilgrimage to Kedarnath.

The skies that Sunday morning were a blinding blue. Today, when a helicopter burst into flames around 11.45 am they were probably not. The six killed may have been just like us, courting adventure and long hours of wait in our bid for spiritual solace at the shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva.

With the mountains rising steep and unyielding all around and our six-seater chopper weaving in and out, sometimes almost within touching distance, our journey was overwhelming and humbling at the same time, the permanence of the snow-topped peaks that had stood for millions of years pointer to the impermanence of our own selves.

Every minute of the eight it took to get to the helipad in Kedarnath made us realise how vulnerable we were. It was not just because of the magnificence of nature and our tiny chopper but also because there were barely any safety norms being followed.

Five of us had taken the chopper from Phata after an exhausting eight-hour wait to board it. That was how crowded it was. We could see helicopters taking off with no one checking to see the luggage. Though the ticket said not more than two kilograms would be allowed, heliservice employees were letting everybody board with their bags, no matter how many or how heavy.

Such has been the rush this year that online helicopter tickets get sold out within minutes of opening. About half a dozen service providers operate from Guptkashi, Phata and Sersi, about seven to eight kilometres from each other, to Kedarnath.

Satyendra Dubey and his family of four from Gorakhpur, who had been staying in Phata for four days, were waiting with us. They had come to the ticket counter at 4 am, three hours before the counter opened, to see that there were already 100 people in the queue.

“After three days, we managed to get tickets. And now are waiting again to get on to a chopper,” Dubey said.

For many of the devotees to Kedarnath the wait didn’t matter. Kedarnath is one of the 12 jyotirlingas. It is believed that Shiva visited the 12 places.

For the hundreds of pilgrims gathered at Phata, that they had got there after two years of Covid seemed to be enough. It’s also probably why nobody was worried about the challenges ahead or what it takes to get a helicopter through the high altitude terrain where the weather can turn in minutes.

We had taken a train from New Delhi to Haridwar, and then a car from the temple town to Guptkashi. If you don’t manage to book a chopper ride, you have to trek for about 10 to 15 hours, an arduous uphill climb that begins from the final road head at Gaurikund.

Those who can’t walk, take ponies or palanquins.

After offering prayers at the shrine, my family walked down for about nine hours. The biggest challenge were the hundreds of ponies walking along the narrow mountain track.

According to the Badrinath Kedarnath temple committee data, 7,32,241 pilgrims visited the Kedarnath shrine in 2018, while 10,00,021 had visited the shrine in 2019, 1,34,881 visited in 2020 and 2,42,712 in 2021.The gates of Kedarnath Temple close on the eve of Bhai Dooj, which will fall on October 26 this year.

“We haven’t seen such a rush in this season for years. We are doing 15 -16 return trips daily,” said Somvir, a taxi driver, who takes pilgrims from Gaurikund to Sonprayag, the last place you can take your personal vehicle till, a distance of about 5 km.

Renovation of the 8th century Kedarnath temple, which was at the epicentre of floods in 2013, is one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream projects.

Mourning for those who had died and thankful for our lives, for my family and me this has been a day of going through every detail of our adventurous pilgrimage that will live on in our memories. Every video and photograph circulating on social media and television channels of the tragedy has underscored for us how fortunate we are.

According to the Rudraprayag disaster management office, the six victims killed in the Bell 407 (VT-RPN) crash at Dev Darshini in Garud Chatti are Poorva Ramanuj (26), Kriti Brar (30) and Urvi Brar (25) from Gujarat, and Sujata (56), Prem Kumar and Kala (60) from Tamil Nadu, and pilot Anil Singh (57) from Maharashtra. May they rest in peace. By Mona Parthsarathi