Very few trek up to Kedarnath. Most pilgrims travel on ponies and some take the dollies. Since I loved the scenery and wanted to experience the wonder of the mountains, I began walking.
There were times when I thought the spiralling path was never-ending and wondered if I was going to make it. Those were the moments when I kept telling myself “One step at a time”. Walking through three short cuts and stopping in between to catch my breath, I completed my seven-hour journey by 1 pm.
Though the temple just a few kilometres ahead, it was a struggle to complete my journey. However, many pilgrims cheered me on saying, “Cheer up, it is very close by.” When I was leaning against a stone and meditating, a mother who was eating some glucose insisted that I too take some of it. She probably thought I was going to faint. I didn’t want to be rude and so I took the glucose she offered.
My bag was heavy with my sweater and coat. However, I didn’t feel the burden of the bag as the backpack’s centre of gravity was aligned with my own centre. “The same way if I am aligned with the centre of the universe, I will not feel the burden of life on me” was the backpack wisdom I got! I wondered how foreigners were able to trek with thin sticks and big but cylindrical and long backpacks.
Soon, the tower of the temple set with a backdrop of snowy mountain peaks came into my sight. Thanammal, whose Tamil-speaking voice I heard in the morning back at the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nivam, had a caesaerian operation nine months ago.
She travelled on a pony for the first seven kms and then decided to trek the remaining distance. She had reached the temple two hours ahead of me and greeted me with a blissful smile after her darshan.
I travelled without an agenda, without an idea. I learnt the tune of an alluring shloka on the 12 Jyotirlinga Shrines for Shiva by Adi Sankara, called the Dwadasha Jyotirlinga Smaranam. The verses are just the names of the 12 Jyotirlinga temples and the one I was just going to see now was one among them.
Keeping off my shoes in the stall just before the temple, I rushed in and it was possible here to enter straight to the sanctum sanctorum for the Nirmalya Darshan in the morning. There was a palpable change in my body chemistry as I went close to the conical Shiva Lingam, looking almost like a mountain peak.