Historic Kedarnath Shrines doors opened with only Pujaris conducting rituals. Char Dham Yatra stopped
The historic temple of Lord Shiva, Baba Kedarnath built on the shores of pious river Mandakini, a tributary of Ganges, considered to be His most miraculous seat situated at 3583 metres from Rishikesh has been opened in the absence of unaccounted number of devotees who would have been here, had there not been pandemic Covid 19.
The temple doors were opened after several months with complete rituals and chanting of Mantras. Eleven quintals of flowers have been used to declare the temple during its inauguration.
Only the Saints n pujaries of the Temple were present on this occasion. The portal of historic Kedarnath Dham has also been opened today early morning at 7 AM with the Char Dham Yatra of historic Shrines Kedarnath, Badrinath Dhams, Gangotri and Yamunotri also stopped, in order to keep lakhs of pilgrims confined to their homes having the necessary Darshans of Lord Shiva by switching to the Kedarnath Dham portal. This decision was taken due to critical pandemic times.
It is just a coincidence that today will be the 100 th day of ecological Dhauli Ganga disaster that has claimed about two hundred lives due to the clouds burst tragedy.
It may be recalled that while the chief pujari of Badrinath Dham is from Kerala called Rawalji, the chief pujari of Kedarnath Dham is from Karnataka.
The pious Kedarnath Dham is surrounded by fully snow entrenched mountains giving a serene beauty look enthralling n mesmerising one and all where except this time, lakhs of pilgrims from all over the country and abroad through Kedarnath to pay their obiesance to Lord Shiva.
It was on June 16, unfortunately in the year 2013 that due to a massive cloud burst the Sardar Sarovar lake was bursted resulting in dangerous flash floods along with boulders and silts gushing with tremendous speed downwards killing thousands of pilgrims of Uttarakhand and the country who had thronged here for Baba Kedar’s obiesance.
The entire Ram Bara was filled with silt n muck with thousands of people succumbing to these flash floods.
According to the government figure about 5.500 pilgrims have died in this ecological catastrophe.
However, the unofficial statistics goes in several thousands more with hundreds of village completely devastated.
A huge boulder that fortunately stopped behind the Kedarnath Temple, saved the historic Mandir as it divided the high speed gushing flash flood into two directions decreasing it’s force.
The Shila, boulder today remains as it is behind the Kedarnath Temple and worshipped by the devotees with a pujari offering prayers regularly when the shrine is opened.
Meanwhile, the Badrinath Dham will open on Tuesday at 4.15 Amit rituals n Mantras including its portal in the presence of Rawalji and other priests. The historic Temple 1200 years old is being decorated by flowers today.
It may be recalled that the Uttarakhand government has lost hundreds of crores of Rs during the last one n a half year since the commencement of the dreaded pandemic as the eco tourism, religious tourism sector have been adversely affected with literally no tourist allowed to come in the hilly region.
The stopping of Char Dham Yatra, ( four historic Shrines travel) by the government this time is in a way learning bitter lessons from the past recent experience of Mahakumbh in Haridwar where about 1.3 lakh people had been infected during April, a collossal 1800 % increase with the devotees further spreading it to different parts of the country including Uttarakhand. Hundreds of employees, police personnel, home guards personnel etc had been infected during their duties at Mahakumbh and when they went back to their respective homes, in villages n townships the Covid further spread resulting in Uttarakhand’s infection statistics reaching nearly two lakhs n fatalities nearing five thousand
