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tourist resort; it merely assumes an- 
other form. 
Having last visited India thirty 
years ago (when I had come from 
Oxford on a two-year research fellow- 
ship at Benares Hindu University), 
on this trip I wanted to revisit some 
of the pilgrim shrines and the places 
and people I had known so long ago. 
With a young Brahman official from 
the great Birla Mandir (temple) in 
Delhi, I set off by train for Rishikesh, 
the stepping-off place for the famous 
triple Himalayan pilgrimage to Bad- 
rinath, Jumnotri, and Gangotri. Rish- 
ikesh, rather like the rest of India, 
seemed not to have changed at all 
in thirty years. As crowded as ever, 
the streets were filled with boisterous 
pilgrims and equally boisterous ped- 
dlers. The pilgrim season was ending 
and snow had already closed the shrine 
of Kedarnath, but even so we were 
lucky to find a small room in one 
of the poorer dharmashala. It was 
a typical pilgrim accommodation, an 
eight-foot-square cell with a clean ce- 
ment floor and no furniture, only a 
small grass broom. Traveling as pil- 
grims, we each carried a blanket, a 
shawl, and a change of clothes that 
doubled as a pillow. Most pilgrims 
prefer unfurnished accommodations 
for reasons of both ritual and physical 
purity rather than because of any urge 
toward self-mortification. 
A road of sorts now links Rishikesh 
with Badrinath, nearly two hundred 
miles into the mountains near the 
source of the Alaknanda, a major trib- 
utary of the Ganga River. At dawn, 
Mohan Kumar and I joined the crowd 
of pilgrims on the streets; about eighty 
of us managed to get on an ancient 
vehicle designed to hold a maximum 
of forty people. Luckily, I did not 
have a window seat. Even when stand- 
ing I could see enough of the pre- 
cipitous drop from the edge of the 
typically steep, twisting, mountain 
road to make me feel slightly nau- 
seated. Landslides had swept parts of 
the road away, and every now and 
then the outer wheels of the bus 
dipped alarmingly as the driver ne- 
gotiated the crumbling verge. Every 
week there are accidents; not infre- 
quently, busloads of pilgrims fall to 
the rocky riverbed hundreds of feet 
below. On our trip, nobody seemed 
concerned; some passengers even 
joked about the possibility of “instant 
transmigration” if they were to fall 
into the holy river. 
This denial of danger cannot be put 
down to religious fervor alone, al- 
though that plays a part. Indeed, some 
of the older pilgrims hope to die while 
engaged on a holy pilgrimage, and 
many journey to sacred places and 
stay there until they do die. Then pil- 
grimage becomes more like retirement 
than tourism. But the same devil-may- 
care attitude, from a touch of reck- 
lessness to the downright courting of 
disaster, characterizes many tourist 
and vacation activities, such as sports 
in which skills are tested as well as 
courage. For the passengers on the 
bus to Badrinath, the ride was also 
a test of faith. 
Badrinath is high up in a steeply 
sloping valley, only a few miles from 
the Tibetan border. Ice-covered moun- 
tains fringe the near horizon, with 
Nilkanth reaching more than 21,000 
feet. In October it was cold and windy 
but as yet free of snow. The site is 
not spectacular in any way; the sanc- 
tity of the place derives from its lo- 
cation on one of the major sources 
of the holy river Ganga. 
The temple of Badrinarayan is on 
the far side of the Alaknanda River, 
across a wooden bridge. It is sur- 
rounded by stalls selling trinkets and 
souvenirs and special foodstuffs that 
are brought into the temple and 
blessed, then taken back home for dis- 
tribution to friends and relatives. In- 
side the temple courtyard were other 
stalls occupied mostly by regional 
priests keeping a roll of all members 
of their community who came to 
Badrinath. Most of them had posted 
elaborate lists of the various puja they 
would perform and at what cost. 
Mohan Kumar was dismayed to find 
that he did not have enough money 
to pay for a puja of the kind he 
wanted. He tried bargaining but that 
failed, so he settled for something less 
and insisted on my attending and shar- 
ing the blessing with him, although 
he refused to let me share the cost. 
I was moved by his devotion and by 
his enormous excitement at having ac- 
complished a pilgrimage that a very 
few ever make, and generally only in 
their later years. I might have been 
more moved by the puja itself, which 
I remembered well from long ago, but 
for the fact that a short distance away 
a number of pilgrims were clustered 
around a radio that was blaring a 
broadcast of a championship cricket 
match being played in Calcutta. I 
never did like cricket, and the precise 
English accent of the Indian commen- 
tator describing the action added, for 
