Amarnath Yatra To Commence June 11

May 17, 2006

Om Namah Sivaya

"The annual pilgrimage to the Himalayan cave shrine of Amarnath in south Kashmir will start from the Baltal and Pahalgham routes simultaneously on June 11 subject to clearance of tracks and weather conditions. Hot water supply, 40 insulated pre-fabricated huts at Panjtarni and Sheshnag in addition to 329 toilets at Sheshnag and 167 at Panjtarni, traditional halting stations en route to the cave shrine situated at an altitude of 3880 metres are some arrangements for the pilgrims being given final touches. Jammu and Kashmir Governor S K Sinha, who is Chairman of Amarnathji Shrine Board, announced the date of the yatra while addressing a meeting at Pahalgam on Friday to take stock of the arrangements. He appreciated the measures for setting up eco-friendly pre-fab portable toilets with leach pits instead of deep trench latrines. He asked the Anantnag district administration to ban use of polyethylene on the entire track and base camps and prevent effluents from toilets or

'langars' (community kitchens) from being dumped into the Lider river. The Governor also stressed on coordinated efforts between agencies and the shrine board for an incident-free yatra like in the past three years. Terming Amarnath yatra as a symbol of "Kashmir's composite culture," he said it would be incomplete without the active support of the local people and both pilgrim and traditional tourism had proved a boon to the state's economy."

Experience of Sri Swami Vivekananda at the Shrine of Amarnath

'He entered the cave with a smile he knelt first at one end of the semi-circle, then at the other. The place was vast, large enough to hold a cathedral; and the great Ice-Siva, in a niche of deepest shadow, seemed as if throned on its own base. A few minutes passed, and then turned to leave the cave.

To him, the heavens had opened. He had touched the feet of Siva. He had had to hold himself tight, he said afterwards, lest he "should swoon away". But so great was his physical exhaustion that a doctor said afterwards that his heart ought to have stopped beating, but had undergone a permanent enlargement instead. How strangely near fulfilment had been those words of his Master (Sri Ramakrish), "When he realizes who and what he is, he will give up his body!"

"I have enjoyed it so much!" he said half an hour afterwards, as he sat on a rock above the stream-side, eating lunch with a kind Naked Swami and me. "I thought the ice Linga was Siva Himself. And there were no thievish Brahmins, no trade, nothing wrong. It was all worship. I never enjoyed any religious place so much!"

Afterwards he would often tell of the overwhelming vision that had seemed to draw him almost into its vertex. He would talk of the poetry of the white ice-pillar; and it was he who suggested that the first discovery of the place had been by a party of shepherds, who had wandered far in search for their flocks one summer day and had entered the cave to find themselves before the unmelting ice, in the presence of the Lord Himself. He always said too that the grace of Amarnath had been granted to him there, not to die till he himself should give consent. And to me he said, "You do not now understand. But you have made the pilgrimage, and it will go on working. Causes must bring their effects. You will understand better afterwards. The effects will come."

Sivaya Namah

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