Garhwal Himalaya
Kedarnath
The Temple in the Snow
A thousand-year-old shrine at 11,755 feet, reached on foot, and sealed under snow for half of every year.
See the journeyOne of the three ways
Sacred India
Two temples at the end of the road, opened by the season and closed by the snow.
There are places in the Indian Himalaya that cannot be reached by anyone in a hurry. The road narrows, then ends. The last miles are walked. And at the top of the valley stands a temple of grey stone that has been there for something close to a millennium, open for six months of the year and sealed under snow for the other six.
India has walked toward these shrines for longer than most countries have existed. What is striking is not the ritual — it is the ordinariness of the devotion, the fact that a hundred thousand people a year still make a journey their great-grandparents made on foot.
You do not need to believe anything to be changed by this. You need only to walk slowly, arrive early, and stand still for longer than feels comfortable.
The journeys