The winner of our Pilgrimages competition tackles the Chota Char Dham, in the Indian Himalayas, braving cold-bucket baths, jostling with other pilgrims, and powering through splashes of horse manure in search of happiness.
Here and Now in Gaurikund: The Pilgrimage Base Camp
Pablo squats under a staircase in the dark corridor. Naked and trembling, he pours small plastic pitchers of cold water on himself from what I presume is a dirty mop bucket. He’s yelling like I’ve never heard him yell.
I watch him bathe from a cocoon of blankets on one of two hard mattresses that, squashed together with its counterpart as a “king-size bed,” occupies all but a sliver of the cold, pale pink room that we finally found but need to vacate by 9 a.m. Pablo’s face is red, his energy feels fierce, and his screams have turned to ecstatic prayers, “Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Ooooom Namah Shivaya!”
Eventually, he returns to the room like nothing ever happened – silent, shiny-eyed, and full of goosebumps. He was slim to begin with, but I notice how skinny he’s become. This is our third week of the pilgrimage, but it feels like we’ve moved through lifetimes together on this journey.
I envy Pablo’s cleanliness and wonder if I’ll muster up the willpower to strip off my layers and brave a bucket bath too. I laugh out loud at the absurdity of our recent lives – and notice that my exhalation visibly hovers in the room’s frigid atmosphere.
We thought tonight would be comfortable – and actually, it is, compared to last night.
Yesterday: The Ascent
Last night, our bucket of bath water was hot, but Pablo had to beg for it. A man from one of the restaurants at the top of the mountain finally conceded because I, a foreigner, couldn’t stop convulsing with shiver-spasms. I hadn’t felt my toes since the rain started in the late afternoon during the last part of the climb.
Our trek began 14 hours earlier with a 30-minute-long human traffic jam – backpacks slammed against bodies and bodies slammed against others’ bodies – as what felt like a lakh (Indian for shit-ton) too many pilgrims from around the country tried to shove their way through a far too narrow entrance gate. We’d been in India long enough to know that if we didn’t push too, we’d never get in. So, with elbows up for protection, we shoved our way into a two-day round-trip hike to one of the world’s holiest and most inaccessible Shiva shrines – Kedarnath.
Kedarnath is the third of four temples that comprise Uttarakhand’s most highly touted yatra, or pilgrimage, “Chota Char Dham,” which translates to something like “the small circuit of four abodes.” At nearly 12,000 feet, Kedarnath serves as both the literary and geographical climax of this once-in-a-lifetime (according to the locals) journey. The shrine is also revered as one of India’s 12 Jyotirlingas (sacred sites of Shiva) and as part of Panch Kedar – five physical manifestations of Lord Shiva, hidden in the remote Himalayas.
Due to the yatra’s popularity and a short time window for temple access, most pilgrims plan this trip months or years in advance. They arrive at each site via some combination of private transportation, tour bus, horse, or helicopter, and typically complete the journey within a week or so. Pablo and I had encountered a handful of foreigners during the past weeks, but with public transportation not straightforward or readily available, the pilgrimage naturally culled out all but those with a strong calling and a tolerance for discomfort.
Despite our wisdom that it’s helpful in life, particularly life in India, to withhold expectations, Pablo and I envisioned this part of the journey as a high-altitude hike through whatever conditions the mountains would throw at us, dispersed with a few groups of travelers and robed sadhus along the way. However, to our dismay, the way to Kedarnath quickly revealed itself to be a steeply inclined combination of cement sidewalk and stone steps. Its switchbacks were packed with humans, horses, horses carrying humans, humans guiding horses carrying humans, and humans carrying other humans in baskets(!) – a path lined with so many beings that, from a distance, it appeared as a colorful river flowing throughout the landscape.
So, for nearly the entirety of the 16-kilometer climb, Pablo and I navigated through chaos. Our fellow pilgrims knocked us around, yelled at us (side! side!), and splashed us with a mixture of rainwater, mud, and horse manure. In some way, we felt prepared for this. From our home in Southern India, we had spent weeks Jeep-sharing, hitchhiking, and climbing to the pilgrimage’s first two temples, Gangotri and Yamunotri. Our trek to Gangotri was physically intense and Freezing (yes, with a capital), and the path to Yamunotri was a wet mess of plastic-poncho’d people navigating literal and metaphorical horseshit. However, the road to Kedarnath was colder, wetter, steeper, longer, and more congested. Trekking to Kedarnath felt like a combination of tough love from Mother India and Mother Nature at the same time.
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Along the spiritual path, we often say it’s good “practice” when conditions fall short of what we desire. My Kedarnath practice was to breathe slowly and walk quickly – “quickly but carefully!” as Pablo often yelled back at me – with gaze down, body numb, and mind peaceful. I inhaled and walked, exhaled and walked, and followed Pablo, followed Pablo, followed Pablo.
Even so, we somehow managed to lose each other on the mountain. From each of our perspectives, this was slightly more dramatic than these words let on. However, attracting attention as foreigners served us in this instance, and our journey continued (as journeys always do) – albeit in a more somber sort of way.
At the previously mentioned foot-numbing time of the afternoon, rain grew heavy, and we took shelter under a large chai tent. A local boy told us that it would be difficult to find a place to stay near the temple without a reservation. He offered to help, and for the final hour of the trek, Pablo followed the boy and I followed Pablo (…followed Pablo, followed Pablo) into the darkening distance.
Finally, but also suddenly, we reached the ascent to the temple. Pablo and I, dripping wet, speechlessly looked at each other, nodded, and laughed. Quickly, my laughter turned to fits of tears. Perhaps it was due to the challenge of the day or the previous weeks, but I had never felt such a powerful sense of presence. I saw the entire pilgrimage as flawless – every Jeep ride, every plateful of rice, everything “good” and “bad” that happened along the way, an integral instrument to Be Right Here.
We must have dropped our bags for a moment to press our hands together in front of our hearts before slowly continuing on, mindfully watching our final footsteps to “Sri Kedarnath Dham,” a small temple enshrouded in snowy Himalayan peaks, still glowing white as night fell over the village.
After darshan of the small deity inside the shrine, a group of Indian boys (including our chai shop angel/mountain guide) scrambled to secure our accommodation – the most expensive but only second dingiest room of the pilgrimage. This is the point where Pablo begged the local men for hot water and where my body finally stopped shivering.
We enjoyed a hot meal and, for the first time in many days, Earth didn’t seem so cold or foreign. I drifted to sleep fully clothed with my body aching from the trek and my mind aching from the realization that we would have to return to Gaurikund tomorrow.
Earlier Today: The Descent
During the night, I awoke to Pablo sitting up in bed. By this point, we’d developed some shared senses, and even through my sleep-altered consciousness, I wasn’t surprised when he suddenly bolted for the toilet. Trying to recover the warmth that escaped the bed, I listened to him purge whatever it was that Kedarnath had called to the surface. I stayed awake, feeling his sickness, until he arrived back and eventually fell asleep holding his shivering body.
My next moment of awareness was of temple horns and bells. In the darkness, I rolled out of bed and into the street to find hundreds of pilgrims lined up throughout the village square, waiting to enter the temple. Pablo said he felt okay and somehow seemed like he felt okay too, so we left the room and sat in the cold shadow of Kedarnath, waiting for the morning sun to rise above the mountains before retracing the same path with the same obstacles we had just overcome.
After a long, cold, wet, and anticlimactic day, we arrived in town to find, once again, a lack of accommodation amidst the unimaginable crowd of pilgrims. I became frustrated with the situation, and Pablo (predictably from previous patterns) became upset with me for becoming upset. Eventually, we found the cold, pale pink room that we would need to vacate by 9 a.m.
Here and Now, and a Glimpse of Beyond: Back in Gaurikund
So, here I am, huddled under a fat stack of heavy blankets, contemplating yesterday and today and if I should take the cold bucket bath.
It looks like tomorrow, we’ll begin our journey towards Badrinath, the final of the Chota Char Dham temples, during which Pablo and I will both get sick – physically and of each other. We’ll get stuck a couple of times along the way due to severe weather and road blockages. We’ll make a diversion at another high-altitude Shiva shine, where we’ll lose each other in the mountains again. We’ll consider parting ways, but decide to complete the pilgrimage together.
Eventually, we’ll end up spending a full night, with feet numb but minds awake, outside the entrance to the Badrinath temple. We’ll be amongst the first pilgrims to enter the shrine when it opens at 3:30 am, and then we’ll share one final nauseating Jeep ride down to the room two hours away that we had paid for but weren’t able to reach.
We’ll decide to keep the room for one more night, take proper showers, and sleep for half a day. We’ll reminisce and laugh and eat vegetables, and life will feel perfect until Pablo tells me that he wants to leave for Rishikesh tomorrow…alone. He’ll listen with no expression when I tell him how sure I am that we’re supposed to be together, and when he walks away the following day, I’ll watch him, hoping he’ll turn around. His red backpack will bounce up and down with his steps as he continues without looking back, and I’ll cry more than I’ve cried in years.
However, at this moment in Gaurikund, covertly watching the wild aliveness of a loved one, I realize I’m in the midst of the best adventure – physically, emotionally, and transformatively – of my life. And I feel happy.
