Kedar yatra kicks off to high-profile start with Rahul visit

DEHRADUN: The Kedarnath yatra got off to a high-profile start on Friday with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi becoming one of the first visitors at the shrine, revered as the principal abode of Lord Shiva in the Uttarakhand Himalayas. Gandhi, wearing a peaked cap and blue jeans and sporting a few days’ old stubble, arrived at Kedarnath after a 16-km trek, part of which he had covered on Thursday afternoon.
At 8.30 am, he was at the temple doors, waving to locals and curious onlookers. At 8.50 am, the appointed auspicious time for the opening of the shrine’s portals, he was whisked inside by head priest Bhima Shankar Rawal who helped him perform the puja for the deity. He stayed inside the sanctum sanctorum for almost 10 minutes before taking a parikrama around the temple. Darshan was thrown open for the general public soon after he left.
Later, talking to mediapersons, Gandhi said his experience inside the temple was profound. “Aamtaur par mandir mein jaata hun to kuchh mangata nahin hun. Par jab main andar gaya, aag jaisi shakti mili (Usually, I don’t ask for anything while visiting a temple. But when I went inside, I experienced fire-like energy).”
On being asked why he took the trek route instead of flying in on a chopper as was the norm in VIP visits, the Gandhi scion, who recently returned from a 56-day sabbatical, said that he had two reasons for doing so. “First, I wanted to pay tribute to those who had died during the June 2013 calamity that had struck Kedarnath. I felt that if I had flown in, it would have been disrespectful to the departed souls.”
Secondly, he added, he wanted to help porters and other people who worked in the temple town by sending out the message that the Kedarnath yatra is safe. The second motive was to allay the fear among the people across the country over the Char Dham yatra post the 2013 tragedy. “There are many porters here, whose income is dependent on how the yatra fares. I hope that my decision to trek here will send out a positive message to people throughout the country about the safety aspect of the yatra.”