Pilgrimages are difficult journeys. They are designed to be so. It’s the idea of the pilgrimage. An old picture from the 19th century of the Kedarnath Temple from the archives of the Geological Survey of India shows the temple stand tall amidst a landscape of nothing but imposing mountains. Mystics and wanderers have spoken of streams of consciousness and energy flowing in such places. With no distraction, just the vastness of nature all around the pilgrim finds a sense of penance and his self. Over the years, such journeys have become easier, with better transport, road connectivity and Kedarnath is no exception. But still people come from all corners, suffering extremities for days before they reach their destination. And once they do, every hardship, every stiff joint of the body finds itself alive and exhilarating with joy.
In the case of Ravi and Rekha Sharma it was the fervour along the way that had pushed them. The sixteenth day of June, was a violent monsoon day, the sounds of sheets of water falling had been deafening. The rain hadn’t paused for a breath. The couple from Baroda in Gujarat had done their Kedarnath darshan. They had got caught in the downpour on their trek down.
The beauty of the landscape that had taken her breath away, the afternoon they came to this sacred territory was forgotten. There was something evil about this rainfall. Rekha had tried to hold on to her husbands arm but had found the support of the mountain edge more comfortable.
“He had only moved a few steps ahead, big boulders suddenly crashed into the road. I just saw a huge gap, a giant gorge. We barely had time to let out a cry.”
An angry stream compressed for long gushed out taking with it large tracts of soil. Rekha was this side; a few hundreds were across, the ones in the middle, like Ravi, were nowhere. The river Mandakini flowing below had turned brown. Ravi had worn a navy blue shirt that morning.
For the next three days Rekha and about a hundred others tried everything, taking alternate paths, deceptive short cuts, rocky climbs, calling loved ones and waving flags made out of clothes. In the end it was all the same, they were stuck on a narrow road with gorges on both sides and a deep, sharp decline in front. They had reckoned they were a few kilometers short of Ram Bada, the mid-point between Gaurkind and Kedarnath.
“We had nothing to eat, except what we had carried, we could see food packets being dropped but they often ended in the river. It was a very hungry river,” Rekha says.
The physical landscape, its chaos sometimes serves as a mirror for the inner self. When the first rescue chopper arrived, the ITBP men who had found this group of just a few hours ago had to tap into every ounce of their training to prevent a stampede. The last few days had been a forest of moments for all. There was restlessness, fatigue, grief but most of all the fear that there was no proof of their life or death, until now.
Among the holiest Hindu tirthas are sacred rivers. The Ganga, of course sacred along its entire length but its sanctity is magnified at places which is why 85-year old Indrajit Pathak was determined to trek up to Kedarnath. He had managed, taking a full day but just before he was to go inside the temple, the sky had taken the colour of ash and rain and thunderstorms had poured in torrents. Pathak had found himself amidst a mountain of stones and gushing water.
“No screams could be heard,” he remembers, “just the fury of water.”
A large boulder, about 700 metres short of the temple became his shield against nature’s fury. Pathak spent two nights, drinking dirty water, and mumbling all the prayers he remembered. Frightened by the darkness and the silence of the mountains, he stretched his legs for the first time two days later.
A cashier with the Bank of India in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, Pathak had retired two years ago and lost his wife a year later. Since then every few months he would set out to some temple in some corner of the country. When the NDRF personnel found him and gave him a food packet, Pathak could barely open it and hold the puri in his hands.
“I do not have the heart to live another day in this rubble-strewn land,” he had told them.
A week before tragedy struck, it was pilgrimage season, everywhere in the hills. Every transport available was taken by passengers on various quests, tourists keen on sight seeing, some treading the path of the Char Dham for enlightenment and some not sure of why they were here.
Ram Avtaar Gupta has seen them all. A private taxi driver, he has been on the Char Dham route for 15 years. His advice to pilgrims is manifold.
“Piggyback rides won’t get you far. Peace isn’t coming to you perched on someone else’s back.”
He had mildly chided his last group when some able-bodied young men had expressed a desire to hire a palanquin for the 14-kilometre trek from Gaurikund to Kedarnath.
Each trip was a pilgrimage for him. His livelihood depended on the sanctity of this travel. The growing number of restaurants serving non-vegetarian food and liquor along the routes to the four sacred sites had troubled this vegetarian teetotaler. On the route to Gangotri he would often stop his car at places and urge pilgrims to drink the clear, cold water that came through dark clay and tasted of the forest.
Four days after the flash floods he had been forcibly inducted by the district administration to ferry evacuated pilgrims from Dharasu to Rishikesh and bring back bread and biscuits on the return journey. This was his second round trip and he had reached Dharasu very early, hours before the first sortie would take off to Harsil and bring back tourists and pilgrims.
4:00 AM. The village is asleep. But the Paras Hotel and its adjoining Krishna Hotel are up and buzzing. Pots of tea are being prepared; lights in most of the rooms are on. There is the sound of water filling buckets coming from some and shouts of no water in taps from others. Clothes are hanging out to dry in balconies. In just about ten minutes, the IAF pilots from various squadrons across the country will be at the airstrip for their first briefing by Group Captain MK Yadav, leading the mission here in Dharasu and hoping to complete evacuation from Harsil and Manheri in a matter of a day or so. Seven planes on the tarmac are fueled and ready to take off. They will be started soon after the briefing is over. He had spoken of the three Cs in yesterday’s briefing, how pilots are curious on day one of the mission, careful on the second and sometimes complacent on the third. His men have internalized it all. The density of the helicopters over these skies had increased many times and safety is paramount.
Down south in the Pauri district, in Gaucher another temporary base from where operations are being launched for Guptakashi and Gaurikund, an unmerciful reality has come pouring. One of the planes has brought firewood to cremate the dead. They are being offloaded far ahead on the airstrip. The same plane will now go to Guptakashi and evacuate passengers.
Rekha and Indrajit have found their way in. The IAF personnel hands her clipboard with sheaf of paper and asks her to sign. It’s an indemnity bond. Rekha hasn’t heard him. Her eyes are shut, her lips mumbling a prayer, and her face turned in the direction of the shrine that has taken away everything.
Sitting a few places away from her is Indrajit Pathak. He will go from Guptkashi to Dehradun and then to Gorakhpur. Before his departure for Uttarakhand the village head had warned him, “Nothing can prepare you for a pilgrimage.”
Certainly, nothing could have prepared him for this one. A worshipper of Shiva, Pathak believes God presides over existence and destruction. After a few weeks with his grand children in Gorakhpur he wants to go and live in an ashram in Ayodhya.
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