Kedarnath & Badrinath-where men walk with the gods!

BADRINATH KEDARNATH.

To understand Hinduism, and I have made this self discovery myself, one has to walk with the gods-in the snowy peaks of the Himalayas.

Although Varanasi, Vrindavan and Mathura, in the plains of north India, are the great centers of Hinduism, it now seems these represent a later (or earlier?) development of man's quest for God.

It is difficult to understand how this quest that began in the vast steppes and mountain ranges of Central Asia, where the Aryan Indo-Europeans roamed for a thousand years, which, by 1500 B.C.E., was, as religious beliefs, carried to the Iranian plateau in the west (as Zoroastrianism) and to the great Indian plains in the east, as Vedic Hinduism, came to be symbolised with such power and spiritual upsurge in the high altitudes of the Himalayas.........it is perhaps here that the earlier Vedic belief in the great god Indra changed to belief in a great god, from the snow mountains, Shiva.

After their encounter with the high peaks of these highest mountains in the world, and the realisation that the sacred Ganges originates there, that sustains millions in the plains of India, that ancient Bharatvarshi (dwellers of Bharat-India) Hindus must have felt the call of Vishnu and Shiva, and formed the legends that the Ganges descended from the heavens!!!

It is just not the temples at Badrinath and Kedarnath that symbolise man's quest for God here, but the mountains reveberate with the call of man's reaching out to the unknown.
Through two thousand years ascetics-sadhus and holy men have roamed these regions, clad in simple poor men's clothes, oblivious of the cold, doing severe penance and self mortification in their search of a higher truth!

That Kerdarnath is situated on the banks of the river Mandakini, Badrinath on the banks of the Alakananda and Gangotri (see post below this) on the banks of the Bhagirathi, all these, and other river streams forming the source of the Ganges, it becomes apparant that ancient man understood the intimate relationship between these great mountains and the rivers that sprang from there!

The great proponent of Hindu philosophy, Adi Sankara, (8th century A.C.E.) who revived Hinduism, in the face of the growing number of Buddhist, Jains and "other Hindu" adherents, passed away in Kedarnath ............getting there.

Badrinath..........getting there.

all pics : views of the Badrinath and Kedarnath peaks and towns; last pic on left-Kedarnath temple; last pic on right-Badrinath temple.