Reluctant pilgrim

For Harish Dhillon a visit to Garhwal had nothing to do with its religious significance,
but the spiritual pull of the area soon caught up with him

ALL of my like-minded fellow travellers and I believed that it is the journey and not the arriving that is important. As such the plan was to follow the Bhagirathi, the Mandakini and the Alaknanda as far as we could go and thus see a great deal of Garhwal. The journey had nothing to do with the region’s connection with religious myths and legends or its being called dev bhumi. But so strong is the spiritual heritage of the area that it soon caught up with us.

We reached Rishikesh at dusk, to the sound of a thousand temple bells, a thousand voices chanting the aarti and a breathtakingly beautiful sight of thousands of little oil lamps floating down the river. I was woken at dawn by the prayers of an early morning bather: The beauty and the magic of the Gayatri mantra brought to me peace and a deep stillness.

We drove through Dev Prayag and followed the Alaknanda to Rudraprayag where it meets the Mandakini. We passed thousands of pilgrims in chartered vehicles and on motorcycles, and sadhus on foot, many of them barefoot. The motorcyclists flaunted saffron turbans, scarves and even flags.

We spent the night at Guptkashi and drove next morning to Gauri Kund—the point from where the trek to Kedarnath begins. It was a small temple town, its single cobbled street slippery with wet and slime, the old mud houses leaning precariously over the street. I felt a soft, sad regret at not making the trek to the fabled shrine of Kedarnath.

We drove back to Rudraprayag following the Alaknanda and reached Joshimath in the evening. It was a typical hill town. The numerous signposts to various temples bore testimony to its religious importance. It was here that the Adi Shankaracharya meditated and embarked on his successful attempt to revive Hinduism. There was now a stronger regret at not visiting the spots connected with the sage.

Perhaps others in the group, too, shared this regret because they agreed that we should make an effort to visit Hemkunt Sahib the next day. We reached Gobind Ghat early morning and set out for Hemkunt, a couple us on foot and I on a mule.

The trek followed the Alaknanda. The sound of the gushing waters, beautiful and strong, brought joy to the heart. The most remarkable feature of the trek was that there was no garbage along the entire route. The Guru Gobind Singh Marg Trust had put up garbage bins at frequent intervals and there were safai karamcharis to sweep away the mule droppings. There was a sense of camaraderie amongst the pilgrims who never failed to exchange greetings as they passed each other.

We reached Hemkunt in the afternoon. So much has been said about this shrine, so much depicted in visual images, but nothing, absolutely nothing, had prepared me for the overwhelming beauty of it all. A deep sense of tranquillity and calm came upon me.

We bathed in the icy waters of the lake and all exhaustion, physical and mental was washed away and all emotional and intellectual baggage was cast aside. Everything was still within me as if I had found the core of my being. I had not come on a spiritual quest yet this could be nothing other than a spiritual experience. The wind was strong and after the icy bath, it hurt my head. I bought a scarf to protect myself— inevitably it was saffron. We reached Gobind Ghat next morning and drove to Badrinath.

Badrinath is one of the dhams established by Shankaracharya. It has a temple to Vishnu. The stillness of the previous day remained and I found no annoyance in the jostling crowd, the garish colours with which the beautiful antique stone façade had been painted or the perfunctory darshan that was permitted us. We stopped for lunch at a wayside gurdwara, it was one of a chain of gurdwaras which served langar 24 x 7, and provided shelter and bedding for weary pilgrims.

The next day we followed the Bhagirathi and passed through Tehri. The dam was truly impressive and`A0the lake it mothered, awesome—stretching all of 45 km.

The road from Harsil to Gangotri was sheer joy. The gushing river was never far from sight, the road wound through deodar forests and the snow-covered peaks at the end of the valley played constant hide and seek. Gangotri, the point where the Ganga becomes a fast flowing river, is another one of the four dhams.At Gangotri I did more than receive the mandatory darshan— I brought back a kalash filled with Ganga jal. Gangotri marked the end of our reluctant pilgrimage and from here we returned.

As I sifted through the debris of my trip I found the saffron scarf and in it I found a reiteration of that deep calm and serenity. Saffron is a colour of renunciation, of sacrifice, in this case, the leaving behind of the non-essential parts of myself. I understood, at last, why those youngsters had flaunted saffron – they too had left something non-essential behind.

A pilgrimage, even reluctant, after all, is not an outward journey in quest of God; it is finally, an inward journey in quest of oneself.

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