Amarnath Trek_Adventure Travel_Jan2012

8/3/2019 Amarnath Trek_Adventure Travel_Jan2012

1/670 January/February 2012 www.adventuretravelmagazine.co.uk

Hike it: India

India is larger than

the world, opined theArgentine writer Jorge

Luis Borges. Since I frst

started visiting in 2007, its a land

that has continually captivated

me with its enormous human

dramas, its colossal landscapes,

its extreme degrees o beauty

and ugliness. Its a place where

religion orms the deep backbone

o the culture, so intertwined

with daily lie that almost every-

thing is invested with a spiritual

signifcance. Hinduism in particular

is oten religion-as-riot, passion-

ate and unruly, and never more so

than on yatra. On these religious

pilgrimages, millions o people

will travel thousands o miles ora single moment odarshan the

glimpsing o a sacred place or idol

in spots as distant as the east-

ern beaches o Puri or the hilltop

temple o Tirumala in the ar south.

But no pilgrimage in Hinduism is

as arduous or as revered as the

three-day trek to the holy Shiva

cave at Amarnath, deep in a snow-

choked valley hidden in the ar

northern mountains o Kashmir.

From the 3,377m plateau at

Pissu Top on my rst day, I can see

an unbroken, three-kilometre-long

line o overburdened ponies and

ootbound pilgrims down below

me, snaking up the muddy, ravaged

hillside Ive just ascended. The skyis huge and blue above me, with

snowcapped mountains all around,

a scene that or its remoteness and

beauty should seem peaceul, calm

and meditative. Yet what I see beore

me, in the orm o no less than

10,000 human beings teeming like

a kicked anthill, is a scene o total

madness. It will take me two hard

days to reach the Holy Cave, and a

urther day to trek out to the base

camp at the ar side, a 44km loop

topping elevations o 4,200m; and

yet still this wilderness is packed

with more people many o them

very old, very at, or maniestly

Matthew Crompton joins 10,000

pilgrims on the three-day trek to the

Shiva cave at Amarnath in Kashmir.Think dance parties at 6am, divine

phallic symbols and an experience like

nothing else on Earth

a hindupilgrimage


2/6www.adventuretravelmagazine.co.uk January/February 2012 71

Hike it: India

no pilgrimage in Hinduismis as arduous or as

revered as the three-

day trek to the holy Shiva

cave at Amarnath, deep

in a snow-choked valley

in the mountains



Hike it: India

langars, huge open kitchens ofering

ree ood or pilgrims. Theres a real

estival air; inside the tent I see doz-

ens o people, men and women and

little girls, all smiling and squatted

around low wooden tables, uriously

rolling out chapattis as devotional

music booms rom the loudspeakersoverhead: Bom Bholay! Bom Bholay!

Bom Bom Bom! The twilight is purple

and mauve on the dusty mountains

and theres a kind o happy madness

in the air, passionate and inectious

and wild as only India can be, and as I

squat on the rocks with my metal tray

o dal and rice balanced on my knees,

I eel spontaneously joyul, diferent

rom the pilgrims around me but not

Whos writing?Teacher, writer,

photographer

and part-time

metaphysi-

cian, Matthew

Crompton has

at various timescalled Cleveland,

San Francisco

and Seoul home;

in 2011 he was

abroad in the world at large. Passionately devoted to

trivia and the search or a reebase orm o caeine,

hell argue at length about the relative merits o squat

toilets and the complete validity o rice as a breakast

ood. Women, zoo animals and most Marxists nd

him irresistible.

inrm than an Old Delhi bazaar.

And its not just mobs o

charged-up trekkers, nor the

thousands o poor ponies alongside

them, stoically bearing a somewhat

more indolent group o pilgrims

slowly along the way. No: there are

also, so help me, hundreds o peoplebeing carried, on crude litters made

o rope and lawn chairs and bam-

boo, each borne by a team o our

dirty and understandably hassled-

looking Kashmiri men, slipping and

panting up the muddy track.

There are people rom all over

here, a kind o India-in-miniature

Gujaratis and Mumbaikers, Delhi-wal-

lahs and Malayalees. As I walk along

the gorgeous alpine river-valley

beyond Pissu Top, open beneath that

enormous sky, very green and dotted

with scattered grey stones and crusts

o old snow and herds o grazing

sheep, a middle-aged Keralite named

Pratab points out a huge group o

emaciated, dreadlocked and shirtless

holy men heading deeper into the

mountains. Ah, babas! he says. You

can see they go bareoot, even here,

in the mud and snow.

Thats insane. Ive never seen

so many babas. Its like a baba party

up here.He laughs. It is, actually. They

all come, to meet other babas, to

beg alms, to smoke hashish. In the

camps there are whole baba cities.

Youll see.

Indeed, mid-aternoon sees me

into the massive pilgrim camp at

Sheshnag, an enormous and squalid

sea o tarp-tents, many occupied by

orange-robed babas who are either

very holy or very stoned or both. My

brochure rom the Amarnath ShrineBoard proudly touts the environmen-

tal measures said to grace this years

camps, rom reed-bed composting

toilets to plastic recycling stations, but

even at a glance its clear that these

pronouncements are either hope-

lessly nave or sinisterly Orwellian.

There are heaps o trash and plastic

bottles everywhere, and scores o

people are deecating in crude pits or

on the open hillsides, the wilderness

completely and irretrievably poisoned

by humanity.

Nonetheless, or all its squalor,

the camp is completely ascinating.

When night alls I venture out o my

grubby pup tent to the communal

Basic and bustling: a campsite on the pilgrimage

Never-ending: a queue o pilgrims and ponies



Hike it: India

The idea of climbing

a thousand vertical

metres at six in the

morning on a head

full of hashish seems

more than faintlyhilarious

Colourul pilgrims beginning the

trek to the holy cave



Hike it: India

apart rom them, both accepted

and embraced into their revel.

Sleeping like a stone, I wake

rested at dawn to stumble back to

the langarsor breakast. As I sit

gobbling milky tea and sweet bis-

cuits, a group o 20-something boys

rom Jammu sit down next to me.Do you take Baba-jis prasad? one

asks me under his breath, prasad

normally being the term or a kind

o consecrated ood or sweet.

Whose prasad?

Baba-ji. You know, Ba-ba-ji?

he mimes holding a joint to his lips.

I just laugh. Ha! I think Ill pass

right now, thanks!

The idea o climbing a thou-

sand vertical meters at six in the

morning on a head ull o Kashmiri

hashish seems at this moment

more than aintly hilarious. Instead

I join them in a spontaneous dance

party that has arisen just outside

the tent. Someone has remixed

the devotional music with some

kind o house beat, and people are

there in the early-morning sunlight

clapping hands and busting a

move. And why not, I think? I do a

simple six-step and the robot and

people go wild. Sometimes its nice

being a minor celebrity.

Nonetheless, I quickly pack up

and move on. This second day is

the most arduous o the trek, 18km

over the 4,270m pass at Mahagu-

nas Top and then onward through

the security cordon to the camp at

the mouth o the Holy Cave itsel,much o it on a narrow, muddy track

with a steep drop to one side and

a sheer wall on the other, being

body-checked by litter-carriers and

hire ponies all the while. I make the

boggy climb to the pass in about

90 minutes, and nd hundreds o

pilgrims there gleeully playing in

the dirty snow like little children.

He let his soul here, you know,

a man says to me, rather randomly,

as I stand snapping pictures in the

blinding sunlight. The saint, Bholay,

he let his soul at the holy cave, but

also here in the mountains.

All around? I say, And you

think its still here?

It ishere, my riend, he smiles.

Cant you eel it?

And I think: perhaps I can. Its

a long descent through the high

green meadow, down and down

across the grass and rock and

patchy snow, and Im drunk and

A sadhu(holy man)



Hike it: India

Amarnath

Yatra the

lowdownThe Amarnath Yatrapilgrimage, like anything

in the high mountains o

Kashmir, is a summer-only

occurrence, happening in

the Hindu month oShraa-

vana, coinciding roughly

with July and August in

the Gregorian calendar. In

2011 the pilgrimage ran

rom 29 June to 13 August,

though dates will vary

slightly rom year to year.

Pilgrims can register on site, but its a ar better

option to register ahead o time with the Jammu &

Kashmir (J&K) Bank, either online, or in person once

arriving in India at any o the J&K oces spread

throughout the country. The permit costs only 15 ru-

pees (about 20p!) and requires three passport-sized

photographs.

Once youre registered (to manage the massive

number o pilgrims, youre assigned a specic date

on which to begin your yatra), its best to proceed to

the resort town o Srinagar in northwestern Kashmir,

which has no rail links but can be reached by road or

by air. The yatra itsel begins either rom the pilgrimstown o Pahalgam, or the massive Baltal Camp, both

a couple o hours by bus or share jeep rom Srinagar.

Expect deep mud, rain, cold temperatures

(sometimes below reezing) and even the possibility

o summer snowstorms. Good ootwear, waterproos

and cold-weather clothing are a must. Adequate and

very inexpensive (i squalid) tent accommodation is

available in all the pilgrims camps along the way, as

well as ree ood (very basic but lling) in communal

kitchen tents. Personal cooking gear and tents are

not thereore necessary.

The climax o the pilgrimage is the holy cave atAmarnath, where a phallic lingam representing the

Hindu god Shiva becomes naturally covered with

ice each summer during the pilgrimage season. The

shrine is said to have served as a site o pilgrimage

and worship or over 5,000 years. While the yatra

is wildly popular among Indian Hindus, very ew

oreigners undertake it, and accordingly as a oreign

pilgrim youll be the subject o intense but over-

whelmingly good-natured attention. Expect oers to

dine and talk with people in their tents, and lots and

lots o requests or photographs.

Though the spiritual value o such methods is

dubious, it is also possible to be carried by pony to the

holy cave, to be borne on a crude litter, or even to be

fown in by helicopter! See www.amarnathyatra.org

or ocial inormation and details about the yatra.

giddy on oxygen and pain. In all this

space, I nd mysel suddenly saying

spontaneous prayers or riends

and enemies, orgiving people who

wronged me 20 years ago, singing

happy songs out loud. I trek on,

through the security cordon and up

again onto the precipitous paths,

deeper in to the mountains. By the

time I reach the narrow, snowy dele

at whose distal end the Holy Cave

lies, hours later in a steady drizzle, Ieel completely ready to make the

acquaintance o Lord Shiva. He is

said to reside here, within the cave,

in the orm o a stone lingam a

kind o divine phallic symbol that

each summer becomes mysteriously

coated with a tower o ice.

Im lthy, stinking and unshaven,

but I drop my pack and climb the

long stone staircase to the mouth o

the cave, yawning and lambent in

the semi-darkness, music spilling out

into the dusk. My eet are shredded

rom blisters, but I leave my shoes in

the pile and pad bareoot through

the grit and the lthy water on the

cold stones, and with the chanting

and prostrating pilgrims, move on

inside the cave. Theres a metal gate

beore the lingam which, itsel, has

melted considerably and looks

rather sad and lopsided, but I dont

really care at all. I come carrying with

me all the passion o my co-pilgrims,

all the happy wishes and good things

in my heart. I say my prayers and

make my bows and am summarily

shoved aside by the temple minders,

and on my way out an Indian Armysoldier smiles and gives me an

orange scar adorned with Shiva

mantras. The whole thing, which Ive

walked days to experience, is over in

less than ve minutes.

Outside the cave, looking down

on the steep, narrow valley below,

the hal-moon shines on the snow, on

the peaked roos o the tents, and the

stars are bright as Christmas lights. I

eel at once supremely alone here in

this distant place and yet equally a

part o an ecstatic whole, and I think:

there are many experiences here on

Earth, but truly none like this. I turn

and bow once more, and then head

downhill into the dark.

Proud pilgrim: Matthew having

reached the holy cave

Amarnath Trek_Adventure Travel_Jan2012

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