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me, a note of falsity that 1 had not 
expected in so remote a shrine. Mohan 
Kumar laughed and said that if I were 
really a pilgrim, then I would not have 
even heard the radio, let alone been 
distracted by it. “By the way,” he 
added, “what is the score now?” He 
was a little critical of me because I 
had not joined in the ritual bathing 
in the hot spring that fills a steaming 
pool right below the temple. I was 
reminded again of tourism. 1 had of- 
fended him, not because of any des- 
ecration, but because I was not getting 
my money’s worth, not taking advan- 
tage of all the attractions available 
to me. But I could not escape from 
the feeling that I was in a deservedly 
unfrequented tourist resort and had 
to walk off into the hills for several 
miles before I could feel that for me, 
at least, this was a sacred, rather than 
secular, pilgrimage. 
We all have individual ways of find- 
ing the sacred. Some find it in the 
company of others; some have to be 
alone or have learned how to isolate 
ourselves even when in a crowd. Oth- 
ers need something or someone, such 
as the builders of temples and ca- 
thedrals or the generations that have 
worshiped there before them, to me- 
diate between the sacred and them- 
selves. It is these pilgrims who flock 
to the man-made shrines. At Badri- 
nath I found no one who had the slight- 
est interest in making the pilgrimage 
to Jumnotri. Jumnotri and Gaumukh, 
beyond Gangotri, are for those who 
seek solitude. This was not Mohan 
Kumar’s goal, but being curious and 
believing in the merit of right effort, 
he agreed to come to Jumnotri. 
We had to return by bus and on 
foot to Rishikesh. There we hired a 
car and made our way as far as 
Hanuman Chatti — a day’s walk from 
our destination — where we spent the 
night. Thirty years before, it had taken 
me four long days on foot to reach 
Hanuman Chatti. It is still just a tiny 
cluster of wooden buildings hanging 
on to a rocky ledge above the river, 
the pine-forested mountains rising al- 
most sheer on all sides. The villagers 
continue to take in pilgrims, but now 
they offer thick, quilted bedding as 
well as drafty rooms. Before dawn the 
next morning, we set off on the narrow 
trail that leads up and up, with un- 
pleasant stretches of path cut into the 
sheer rock face as much as a thousand 
feet above the river and with abrupt 
descents that are as alarming and ex- 
hausting as the ascents. 
The last two or three miles are the 
worst, as though designed to test your 
faith. For me, with my fear of heights, 
the last cliff face traverse made me 
stop and consider, very seriously, just 
how much my life was worth. Halfway 
along the traverse, where the ledge 
follows the cliff around a jagged bend, 
the pilgrim sees for the first time one 
of nature’s most magnificent shrines: 
the young torrent of water cascading 
down out of the snows and through 
the pine-covered gorge (crossed now 
by a wooden bridge that is more sub- 
stantial than the old rope bridge that 
used to be there). On the near side 
of the bridge there is now a small 
rest house, a modern construction that 
seems quite out of place. Even more 
out of place was some colorful laundry 
hanging on a line, almost frozen stiff, 
and four figures in bright plastic slick- 
ers squatting on the ground at the 
entrance to the bridge, playing cards. 
They were European tourists on a 
three-week climbing holiday. In two 
days they had not crossed the bridge 
to the sacred shrine and hot springs 
on the far side. They did not even 
know that while the water on their 
side was icy cold, on the far side, 
fed by hot springs, it was warm enough 
to bathe in with comfort. 
The plastic garments, the card 
game, and the visual pollution of the 
laundry, which I found so offensive, 
did not offend Kumar at all. His pil- 
grimage was not mine, his was public, 
not private. “They may think they are 
just on holiday, but if they enjoy 
climbing so much, why have they 
wasted two days here unless they are 
getting something else? Perhaps, for 
them, this side of the river is sacred.” 
The tourists/climbers/pilgrims, as 
Kumar classified them, watched with 
amusement as we crossed the bridge 
and scrambled up to a cave above 
a small temple. Lai Bahadur, our 
driver, was not the least bit interested 
in the tourists; he was too busy smok- 
ing his last cigarette before he crossed 
to what he called the “good” side of 
the river. 
I must have been a tourist thirty 
years earlier, for although I crossed 
the river then, I did not discover what 
the three of us discovered this time — 
each in his own way, each sharing 
his discovery. In the cave Mohan 
Kumar found the holy man of the 
cave and discovered that it was a sa- 
cred person rather than a site that 
he was seeking. We spent a long time 
in that cave. Lai Bahadur discovered 
20 
