1889-90-] <^ District in the Himalayas. 289 



fed, well-clothed European to visit these places ; but it is a 

 terrible thing for the half-starved pilgrims from the plains, 

 dressed in cotton clothes. The mortality is something awful. 

 All along the road the Government has built hospitals for the 

 use of these pilgrims, and it was as superintendent of these 

 hospitals that my visits to Gurhwal were chietly made. Walk- 

 ing along from one hospital to another, I often found pilgrims 

 lying dying on the road, and had to carry them on to the hos- 

 pital to which I was myself going. 



The easiest, though not the most comfortable, way for a 

 pilgrim from the plains to visit the two temples, is to have 

 himself or herself carried in a basket. At Hurdwar, on the 

 12th April, any number of stalwart mountaineers are to be 

 seen, offering to carry a pilgrim, with a preference to a feeble 

 old man or woman, from the plains to Kidarnath and Budrie- 

 nath and back, for the ridiculously low charge of 16 rupees, 

 equal to 32s., paid in advance. If the man or woman who 

 is carried in the basket die en roiUc from cold, as is too often 

 the case, the carrier of the basket is able to make a new con- 

 tract with some pilgrim who has gone part of the way on 

 foot, and who is not able or willing to walk any farther. 

 Generally the mountaineer does some twenty miles a- day 

 with his basket and the passenger in it. There is, of course, 

 not much fear of Ms dying on the road. He is well clad in 

 blanket clothing, not in cotton, like the woman he carries ; 

 and he is accustomed to the hill food, and it agrees with him, 

 which is not the case with the pilgrims from the plains. 



The temples open in the end of April, when their respective 

 high priests go up to them. During winter, the high priest 

 of Budrienath, with all his assistant priests, resides at Joshi- 

 mut ; the high priest of Kidarnath, with his assistant priests, 

 at the village of Okiemuth. Their winter palaces are large 

 buildings. The temples in the eternal snows are small. The 

 high priests are very wealthy and influential persons, and I 

 used always to consider them as the Indian representatives of 

 our Archbishops of Canterbury and York. The Archbishop 

 of Canterbury, or High Priest of Budrienath, is always a 

 Nimburi Brahmin, from Kirat Malwar, in Southern India. 

 The Archbishop of York, or High Priest of Kidarnath, is 

 always a Jungam Brahmin from Maisur, also in Southern 



