Rama’s Bridge, also called Adam’s Bridge, is a 30-mile-stretch (48 km) of 103 sandbanks that form a natural connection between the island of Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu, India and Mannar in northwestern Sri Lanka. Geological evidence suggests that the bridge is a remnant of a former land connection between India and Sri Lanka. Though usually a symbol of connection and peace, this particular bridge has caused controversy galore between Hindus, Moslems, politicians and environmentalists for quite a while now.

The problem starts with the perceived origin of the bridge. Hindus claim that the bridge was built by Rama and his army when they invaded Lanka (today’s Sri Lanka) to free Sita, Rama’s wife who had been abducted by the ten-headed demon king Ravana. Rama’s victory over Ravana is still celebrated today with the festival of Dussera and his return to India three weeks later as Diwali, falling this year on October 17th. As proof, Hindus cite the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, which describes Rama’s life.

Looking west from Sri Lanka to India:

A map of Rama’s Bridge and Palk Bay:

According to a legend of Islamic origin, the bridge was used by Adam to cross over to Sri Lanka to a place now called Adam’s Peak where he is said to have stood repentant on one foot for 1,000 years, leaving a large hollow mark resembling a footprint.

Even geologists have not only one theory of how this bridge was formed. It once was has the world’s largest tombolo or land deposit before it was split into today’s group of shoals by rising sea levels a few thousand years ago. Continuous sand deposition and sedimentation led to the formation of today’s chain of barrier islands. Other geological theories name crustal downwarping, block faulting and mantle plume activity for the bridge’s particular formation.

Regardless of whether one calls this collection of shoals by Rama’s, Adam’s or another name as seafarers have done since the 18th century, fact is that the Bridge and the shallow waters of the Palk Strait have hindered navigation of big ships through the area and forced them instead to travel all the way around Sri Lanka to reach India’s eastern coast.

Rameswaram Island with traditional fishing boats:

Trade in this area has been active at least since the first century BCE but was restricted to small boats and dinghies. Suggestions for creating a navigable passage by dredging the area were already made by British officers in the late 18th century but didn’t surpass half-hearted attempts throughout the following centuries.

In 2001, the Government of India approved the multi-million dollar Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project that plans to create a navigable passage for large ocean-going vessels across the Palk Strait that would cut over 400 km or 30 hours of shipping time off the voyage around Sri Lanka.

Work on the shipping channel has started with dredging the shallow ocean floor near the Indian city of Dhanushkodi but it has not been under a good star – one dredging vessel sunk, another’s spud broke and during retrieval efforts, a crane snapped. Some Hindus believe that this is Hanuman’s way of protecting the work of his master Rama: The monkey god who possesses supernatural strength and his army of monkey men (Vanara) who helped built the bridge many thousands of years ago are still said to watch over it by taking revenge on those trying to destroy it.

Environmentalists opposing the project because of concerns over the impact on the area’s ecology and marine wealth and increased risk of damage due to tsunamis claim that proper scientific studies were not conducted before undertaking this project.

A 2002 NASA satellite image was interpreted by those in favour of preserving Rama’s Bridge for religious reasons as man-made, therefore seeing it as proof of Rama’s work many thousands of years ago. NASA distanced itself from these claims, warning that a satellite image was not sufficient evidence for deducting origin or age of the sandbank chain.

A 2003 study undertaken by the Centre for Remote Sensing (CRS) of Bharathidasan University further stoked the fire by claiming that Rama’s bridge was only 3,500 years old and not 1.7 million as previously assumed. Critics of the study point to its oversights, one being that only the corals growing around the bridge were examined and not the limestone shoals themselves to determine the bridge’s age.

Those worried about physically breaking the bridge should consider that it has actually been broken long back: A ferry service linking Rameswaram in India and Talaimannar in Sri Lanka, part of the Indo-Lanka Railway service since British times, had to be suspended because of the ongoing fighting between Sri Lankan government forces and the separatist LTTE, disrupting the convenient and important rail connection between Chennai and Colombo.

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Green house gases stay can stay in the atmosphere for an amount of years ranging from decades to hundreds and thousands of years. No matter what we do, global warming is going to have some effect on Earth. Here are the 5 deadliest effects of global warming.

5. Spread of disease

As northern countries warm, disease carrying insects migrate north, bringing plague and disease with them. Indeed some scientists believe that in some countries thanks to global warming, malaria has not been fully eradicated.

4. Warmer waters and more hurricanes

As the temperature of oceans rises, so will the probability of more frequent and stronger hurricanes. We saw in this in 2004 and 2005.

3. Increased probability and intensity of droughts and heat waves

Although some areas of Earth will become wetter due to global warming, other areas will suffer serious droughts and heat waves. Africa will receive the worst of it, with more severe droughts also expected in Europe. Water is already a dangerously rare commodity in Africa, and according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming will exacerbate the conditions and could lead to conflicts and war.

2. Economic consequences

Most of the effects of anthropogenic global warming won’t be good. And these effects spell one thing for the countries of the world: economic consequences. Hurricanes cause do billions of dollars in damage, diseases cost money to treat and control and conflicts exacerbate all of these.

1. Polar ice caps melting

The ice caps melting is a four-pronged danger.

First, it will raise sea levels. There are 5,773,000 cubic miles of water in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, if all glaciers melted today the seas would rise about 230 feet. Luckily, that’s not going to happen all in one go! But sea levels will rise.

Second, melting ice caps will throw the global ecosystem out of balance. The ice caps are fresh water, and when they melt they will desalinate the ocean, or in plain English – make it less salty. The desalinization of the gulf current will “screw up” ocean currents, which regulate temperatures. The stream shutdown or irregularity would cool the area around north-east America and Western Europe. Luckily, that will slow some of the other effects of global warming in that area!

Third, temperature rises and changing landscapes in the artic circle will endanger several species of animals. Only the most adaptable will survive.

Fourth, global warming could snowball with the ice caps gone. Ice caps are white, and reflect sunlight, much of which is relected back into space, further cooling Earth. If the ice caps melt, the only reflector is the ocean. Darker colors absorb sunlight, further warming the Earth.

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The first came last month. The next is in November. Such a rare triple-threat occurs only once every 11 years.

The origin of the link between bad luck and Friday the 13th is murky. The whole thing might date to Biblical times (the 13th guest at the Last Supper betrayed Jesus). By the Middle Ages, both Friday and 13 were considered bearers of bad fortune. In modern times, the superstition permeates society.

Here are five of our favorite Friday-the-13th facts:

1. Fear of Friday the 13th — one of the most popular myths in science — is called paraskavedekatriaphobia as well as friggatriskaidekaphobia. Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13.

2. Many hospitals have no room 13, while some tall buildings skip the 13th floor and some airline terminals omit Gate 13.

3. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not travel on the 13th day of any month and would never host 13 guests at a meal. Napoleon and President Herbert Hoover were also triskaidekaphobic, with an abnormal fear of the number 13.

4. Mark Twain once was the 13th guest at a dinner party. A friend warned him not to go. “It was bad luck,” Twain later told the friend. “They only had food for 12.” Superstitious diners in Paris can hire a quatorzieme, or professional 14th guest.

5. The number 13 suffers from its position after 12, according to numerologists who consider the latter to be a complete number — 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles of Jesus, 12 days of Christmas and 12 eggs in a dozen.

Pythagorean legacy

Meanwhile the belief that numbers are connected to life and physical things — called numerology — has a long history.

“You can trace it all the way from the followers of Pythagoras, whose maxim to describe the universe was ‘all is number,’” says Mario Livio, an astrophysicist and author of “The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved” (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Thinkers who studied under the famous Greek mathematician combined numbers in different ways to explain everything around them, Livio said.

In modern times, numerology has become a type of para-science, much like the meaningless predictions of astrology, scientists say.

“People are subconsciously drawn towards specific numbers because they know that they need the experiences, attributes or lessons associated with them, that are contained within their potential,” says professional numerologist Sonia Ducie. “Numerology can ‘make sense’ of an individual’s life (health, career, relationships, situations and issues) by recognizing which number cycle they are in, and by giving them clarity.”

However, mathematicians dismiss numerology, saying it lacks any scientific merit.

“I don’t endorse this at all,” Livio said, when asked to comment on the popularity of commercial numerology. Seemingly coincidental connections between numbers will always appear if you look hard enough, he said.

Read more: Live Science

Any solution to global climate change will eventually have to involve the whole globe, not just the richest countries.

That’s why deals like the one announced Tuesday between Pasadena’s eSolar and the Indian conglomerate Acme Group are essential to any truly green global future. ESolar will sell Acme 1,000 megawatts worth of solar thermal technology, so that the latter can build a network of solar power plants in India’s northern state of Haryana.

“India is an enormous electricity market with enormous demand for growth,” said Rob Rogan, vice president of corporate communications for eSolar. “We see this as our chance to be part of a long-term renewable energy solution in India.”

To date, most wind and solar power has been deployed in the rich, industrialized nations. A 2008 report found that the world’s developed countries had installed 207 gigawatts of renewable-power generation, excluding large hydro. That’s only a few percent of the rich countries’ power generation, but it’s a lot more than the 88 gigawatts of clean power that had been built in the developing world.

Now, even with the Obama-led United States looking increasingly green-friendly, that trend could reverse. Falling renewable-energy costs and the desire to use domestic energy sources have helped green tech make inroads in fast-growing countries. Renewable-energy investments jumped 91 percent in 2007 in China. and India expects add 6 gigawatts of wind power between 2007 and 2012.

Here we present five of the largest green tech projects that have broken ground, or plan to, in 2009. Each one of them is slated to be among the largest green-tech projects in the world. Though each is as big as a large coal plant, your average fossil fuel plant will generate more kilowatt-hours because they can burn round the clock every day the year, not just when the sun is shining or the wind blowing.

(It’s difficult to find out the exact number and size of solar, wind and geothermal projects in the developing world: The English-language paper trail is disappointingly thin. If you know about other projects or initiatives that are planned or complete, let us know in the Comments section, so we can add them.)

Leyte Geothermal Field
Location: Leyte, Philippines
Current capacity: 708.5 megawatts
Planned capacity: 708.5 megawatts
The jumble of tectonic plates underneath the Philippines has created the perfect situation for tapping geothermal power, particularly at the five-plant array of sites near Leyte. Geothermal development has gone so well that a major energy producer swore off coal in January of this year, choosing to buy into the government-run geothermal company, Energy Development Corporation, instead.

Geothermal power has already had marked success in the developing world, as can be seen in the chart. That’s because, when the geological conditions are right, geothermal can be downright cheap.  (Chart: Marin Katusa, Chief Investment Strategist, Casey Research Group)

Suzlon Wind Farm
Location: Near Dhule, India
Current capacity: 650 megawatts
Planned capacity: 1,000 megawatts
Estimated completion date: 2010
Built by Suzlon, a homegrown Indian energy compay, the Suzlon wind farm near Dhule will be the world’s largest when it’s completed in 2010. Already, it’s creeping up on Florida Light and Power’s Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, which has a capacity of 735 megawatts. It’s the brainchild of Tulsi Tanti, Suzlon’s founder and something of an international hero — but not everyone is happy about Tanti’s low-cost approach to wind-farm development. Der Spiegel reported that the farmers who toil under the giant turbines are demanding more money for their land. “If Suzlon refuses to pay, the farmers block the access routes with their buffaloes,” the magazine wrote.
(Image: flickr/ramkrsna)

Acme Solar Thermal Plants
Location: Haryana, India
Current capacity: 0 megawatts
Planned capacity: 1,000 megawatts
Estimated completion date: 2019
Acme, an Indian technology conglomerate, announced its intentions to build up to 1,000 megawatts of solar thermal power Tuesday. The company providing the technology, eSolar, makes 46-megawatt modular power plants that concentrate the sun’s rays onto a central boiler to generate steam to drive a turbine. ESolar’s Rob Rogan said that the companies would break ground on the first 100 megawatts of solar power within the year.

Qaidam Basin Solar PV Installaton
Location: Qinghai Province, China
Current capacity: 0 megawatts
Planned capacity: 1,000 megawatts
Estimated completion date: ?
Two local Chinese firms announced their intentions to install up to 1,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels in northwestern China in January. The China Technology Development Group Corporation and Qinghai New Energy Company will start with a more modest 30 megawatts. They expect to break ground during 2009.

Econcern Wind Farms
Location: ?
Current capacity: 0 megawatts
Planned capacity: 720 megawatts
Estimated completion date: ?
The Dutch energy company Econcern will partner with a major Chinese oil firm and a hydroelectric company to build four wind farms that will generate around 720 megawatts of power. Work is expected to begin this year, but Econcern’s CEO recently admitted that the clean-energy industry faces a serious slowdown that could cause his company to cut jobs.

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The Yamuna is the largest tributary of the revered Ganges, but its polluted waters pose an increasing health hazard to the Indian capital. Now campaigners are calling for urgent action to clean it up

On Delhi’s sacred Yamuna River, beneath a wrought-iron bridge built by the British more than 100 years ago, the remains of the dead were falling on to the living.

From the footbridge – or else from the windows of passing cars and passenger trains – people were throwing bags containing human ashes and garlands of flowers. On the black stinking river below, children sitting astride homemade rafts waited for the bags to fall and then paddled quickly towards them, ripping them apart and collecting the polythene. Sometimes the bags broke open in mid-air, creating a cloud of ash and petals that fell on to those waiting below.

The Yamuna, which passes through Delhi, represents both a terrible irony and one of India’s great unsung scandals. The largest tributary of the revered Ganges, the Yamuna is one of the country’s most sacred rivers, and yet perhaps also its dirtiest. Hundreds of millions of pounds of public and private money has been spent on projects to clean the river and yet where it passes Delhi it is dark, stinking and lifeless – as dead as a handful of ashes. The water from which dozens of children were eagerly gathering plastic bags is officially rated as being fit only for industrial cooling.

Against this backdrop, campaigners are stepping up their efforts to save the Yamuna and draw public attention to its wretched state. They insist their task is vital. Even now the Yamuna provides the bulk of Delhi’s drinking water and campaigners say that unless steps are taken to safeguard this supply, a city that already confronts severe water shortages could be facing a crisis within a decade.

“It’s a terrible irony. In the Hindu religion we are supposed to venerate rivers. The Yamuna is one of the most worshipped,” said Vimlendu Jha, who heads a campaign group called We For Yamuna. “And yet every day 950 million gallons of sewage is pumped into the river. The faecal coliform [bacteria from human waste] count is 100,000 times what is considered safe for bathing… No politician wants to do anything. It has gone from bad to worse.” Most Delhiites barely give a thought for the Yamuna. For the vast majority, the toxic black ribbon that slices through the east of the city – it would be wrong to say the river actually flows – is largely out of sight and out of mind. For those not forced to scrape their survival, there is little reason to visit the Yamuna, except for cremating the dead and scattering their remains according to Hindu tradition.

On a recent morning at Nigambodh Ghat, one of Delhi’s largest cremation sites, the family of Kanti Devi were preparing her body for burning. They had ritually bathed her body close to the Yamuna before wrapping it in a white shroud. They had scattered the body with incense and now the men of the family were building a funeral pyre alongside the water, taking turns to stack wood in a pyramid.

Mrs Devi was originally from the state of Uttarakhand. There, said her cousins, the Yamuna was fresh and alive, the water clean enough to drink. The contrast with the water here could not have been more stark. “Where I live the water is clear, but in Delhi there is so much sewage and so much factory waste,” said a relative. “Here you cannot drink it, you cannot swim in it.”

However bad the river looks from its shoreline, the only way properly to experience the stinking state of affairs in which it finds itself, is to take a boat. Ramesh Chandra is 60 and has been a boatman for 40 years. He remembers when the river was clean enough to see a coin dropped into the water and when fishermen lived on its banks. He used to transport people up and down, from the holy ghats to the bathing ghats and elsewhere. Now the only people who hire him are those wishing to transport a body for cremation or else those scattering ashes.

“No one swims here anymore,” he said, as he pushed us off from the shore with a long bamboo pole. “Only those who want to commit suicide.”

In the middle of the river the water looked as black as pitch. Methane bubbled up from the depths and plastic bags and other rubbish floated on the surface. Now and then the boat would pass some piece of rotting organic matter being feasted on by a swarm of mosquitoes. A splash of water that entered a cut on my hand stung and itched. Mr Chandra said he had developed eczema from the water.

It was also difficult to breathe without feeling nauseous. The river gave off a stagnant, stale stench that only got worse as the heat of the morning steadily grew. Mr Chandra said he had also developed breathing problems. It was easy to understand why.

The Yamuna ought to be enjoying such better fortunes. Rising in the pristine foothills of Himalayas at Yamunotri, it races south towards the plains surrounding Delhi; 250 miles north of the capital, two canals divert off water for the cities of Punjab and northern Uttar Pradesh. Then, just before it reaches Delhi, the Yamuna is halted by a dam where the city authorities extract 250 million gallons a day. Except during the monsoon, no water is allowed to flow into the stretch that passes the city.

“The first step towards saving the Yamuna would be to allow the river to have its own water flow, enough for its minimum ecological survival,” said Manoj Misra, who heads another campaign group, Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, or Save the Yamuna. He said that because the river received no fresh flow of clean water and yet received a huge daily input of sewage, the toxicity of the water was getting ever more concentrated. One environmental group has measured a doubling of pollution levels between 1993-2005.

Vast sums of money have been set aside for projects to clean the river. In 1993, the Yamuna Action Plan was established with more than £90m from the Japan Bank of International Cooperation. Since then more money from the public has been spent and yet there have been no improvements. There are widespread mutterings of corruption and mismanagement.

Responsibility for the river falls on more than half a dozen federal and local authorities. Yet it is the task of the so-called Delhi Jal Board to provide clean drinking water to the city’s 15 million people. A large part of the problem, say officials there, is that large swaths of the city are not connected to the main sewage system, and the system’s pipes are so corroded that a full 55 per cent of waste from those connected to the system does not even reach the plants. The result, according to campaigners, is that massive amounts of raw sewage are either directly discharged or else find other circuitous routes into the river, causing up to 80 per cent of its pollution. What’s worse, once pumped into the river, the dirty, polluted water can start soaking back into the aquifers and ground water supplies that provides a full 50 per cent of Delhi’s supply.

The Jal Board said the challenge of proving clean water was exacerbated by large sprawl of unplanned growth that Delhi has witnessed in recent years. Remarkably the board has claimed that by 2010 – the date when Delhi is to host the Commonwealth Games – it will have halted the discharge of untreated sewage into the river. “The process of cleaning the river involves planned intervention, and we are in the process of completing the works by the target dates,” the board’s chief executive, Arun Mathur, said earlier this year.

That cannot happen fast enough. Even those politicans tasked with the river’s survival admit the awful state of affairs. “If one looks at the river, one almost feels like crying,” said Sheila Dikshit, the Chief Minister of Delhi’s local government. “In fact, it looks like an acid pond. Today, I don’t think that even birds and animals feel like drinking water from the Yamuna.”

That may be so, but it does not stop countless number of Delhi’s poorest people ekeing out their survival from the filthy river and the rubbish that is thrown into it. Where there were once families of fisherman living alongside the Yamuna, now there are families who make a desperate existence collecting plastic bags recovered from the water.

Mr Chandra, the boatman, pushed us over to the far bank to where Nurali Sheikh and his families lived in a collection of shacks surrounded by piles of plastic. He said contractors paid them four rupees (about five pence) per kilo for the plastic and that on a good day he and his family of six could collect 50 or 60 kilos. “The water here is very dirty, very stinky,” said the 70-year-old. “I have never fallen in.”

Mr Sheikh came with us to beneath the arches of the bridge where the boat wobbled rather disturbingly and the water too deep for Mr Chandra’s bamboo pole. We watched the men, women and children sitting on rafts, their heads looking up, waiting for bags to be thrown down by the commuters.

In addition to the bags of ashes and flowers, some commuters also throw coins into the water, an offering to the Gods to try and ensure them good luck. Bobby, a sinewy 31-year-old in shorts, was one of many who scratch a living from such acts of piety. Armed with a large magnet in the shape of a dumbell and a strong rope, he trawled the depths for coins. He had been doing so for 12 years and said that on a good day he could make up to 200 rupees, or £2.50. “People give money to God, they throw the coins in,” he said. Bobby said he paid little attention to the state of the Yamuna though he admitted, perhaps with an element of marvel, that he had heard the river was once clean. “I’m not worried about it,” he said, asked about the potential for falling ill from the polluted water. “I’m used to it.”

By now the sun was climbing into the mid-morning sky and we started the journey back upstream through the still, fetid water. On the way a number of white birds – they may have been egrets or herons – flew out from the reeds. One could not help but wonder what they survived on, given that the river looked so dead. Next to one of gatherings of shacks a young girl joyously submerged herself in the water before doing the same with her dog. On the other bank at a ghat where people once came from across the city to bathe in the holy river, a group of young boys was taking turns to run and leap from the steps into the water.

Back at the cremation grounds from where we had set off, the pyre that had been built by the relatives of Kanti Devi was well ablaze. The men sat talking together under an awning close to the Yamuna, watching the flames dance and waiting patiently for her body to be fully cremated.

Then, once the fire had cooled, they would gather up the ashes and throw them into the water.

Andrew Buncombe reports from India at independent.co.uk/asiablog

I was watching a documentary on tigers the other day, and I started thinking about the dangerous animals in Asia. This inspired me to create my list of the five most dangerous animals in Asia. A couple points before we begin. I know mosquitoes kill more people than anything else ever. I don’t care, they’re boring and I don’t want to write about them. Also, this list is based on subjective criteria, not number of kills. Some of these animals will just cause you pain and you wouldn’t want to meet them in the forest. Now let us begin.

5. Tiger

The tiger has an important place in Asia’s life and culture. It appears frequently throughout the mythology of all the countries in which it appears, generally as a figure of strength and power. It’s generally treated with a healthy respect borne of its danger to humans. While it won’t attack people unless provoked or hungry, clashes are common enough. Recently the issue has become even more common as human encroachment and deforestation means the shrinking habitat of the tiger frequently extends into populated areas. Six people have died and twelve more have been mauled in Bangladesh in the last few months alone after the tigers’ habitat was partially destroyed by a cyclone. They are immensely strong and deadly predators. Treat them with the respect they deserve.

4. Cobra

When I think of deadly snake, movies have trained my mind to think of the cobra. It’s not as dangerous as brown snakes or other poisonous creatures, but it’s still very nasty. The king cobra is the world’s longest venomous snake, reaching lengths of up to 20 feet. Its venom is a neurotoxin, and it is very dangerous. It’s one of the most venomous snakes on the continent, and it can kill a human with a single bite. Thankfully, most of the snake’s bites don’t inject fatal amounts of venom, although the mortality rate is close to 75% when it gives you a full on bite.

3. Malayan Pit Viper

The Malayan Pit Viper is found all across Southeast Asia and Indonesia. It loves thick vegetation, preferring bamboo thickets and overgrown farmland. It’s also a nasty little punk of a snake. It has a notorious reputation as an aggressive snake that is quick to attack humans. In the northern part of Malaysia alone it is responsible for more than 700 snakebites a year. Luckily for those bitten, it’s not got a huge mortality rate. About 2% of people bitten by the snake die.

2. Camel Spider

The camel spider is very widespread, found in deserts from Iraq to China and beyond. They’re not venomous, but they will bite humans and their bite is immensely painful. They’re perhaps scarier than they are dangerous, but they’re scary enough that I’m going to include them on this list because I never want to meet one. For one thing, they will scream at you! They can run very quickly, as fast as a human in many cases, and will utter a scream while they chase things. They can also jump up to four feet in the air. The spider loves shadows, and so if you’re in a desert and happen to be the only thing casting a shadow for a long way around you might find one chasing you to stay in your shadow. Freaky stuff.

1. Krait

The krait is a type of snake found in India and Southeast Asia. The nocturnal animals are immensely poisonous, with a neurotoxic venom more than 16 times deadlier than the cobra’s. The banded krait can allegedly reach more than 7 feet in length. They are nocturnal animals that are aggressive at night. Their bite is fatal to 85% of people bitten, although there is an effective antivenin now so the number is much lower. The venom is particularly painful, and causes paralysis and a slow, agonizing death. You do not want to meet one.

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The annual char dham yatra in Uttarakhand is, without doubt, the most important and spectacular event in the tourism and cultural calendar of this new picturesque Himalayan state.

For centuries, saints and pilgrims, in their search for the divine, have walked these mystical valleys and hills, which provide ample scope for spiritual experiences.

DIVINITY IN THE HILLS

Nestling in the lofty Himalayas in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region are the four holy shrines: Yamnotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, Badrinath – together called the ‘char dhams’. Through these sacred sites meanders the holy Ganga in eternal sanctity and splendour. The dhams receive their holy waters in the form of four streams: Yamuna, Bhagirathi, Mandakini, Alaknanda.

While Yamnotri and Gangotri are located in Uttarakashi district, Badrinath is in Chamoli district and Kedarnath in Rudraprayag district. The opening and closing ceremonies of these shrines (at the beginning and conclusion, respectively, of the yatra) are sacred, colorful events awaited eagerly by locals and pilgrims alike. All shrines open in April-May and close in November, after which the region is snowbound. The yatra thus carries on for almost half the year; bringing in millions of devotees to the state and contributing to the tourism-based hill economy.

Pilgrimages form a very important part of Uttarakhand’s tourism activity. After being quiet for six months, the Garhwal hills come alive in March every year as hectic preparations begin at various levels for the pilgrimage. This keeps the hills abuzz with pilgrim activity through summer; monsoon, autumn.

JOURNEY TO THE SOUL

The char dham yatra got under way on April 19 this year with the reopening of the portals of Gangotri and Yamnotri shrines. Kedarnath dham reopened on April 30 while Badrinath opened on May 1.

Pilgrims usually start to arrive in Haridwar and Rishikesh a week before the portals reopen at Yamnotri. The yatra starts from Haridwar as well as Rishikesh. Both centres are decorated like brides to welcome pilgrims.

Two Pawan Hans’s helicopters operate between Agastyamuni and Kedarnath to ferry pilgrims who cannot undertake the arduous trek from Gaurikhand to Kedarnath. Tourism brochures and other literature related to the char dham yatra is available at all the tourist information centres and at the guest houses of the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam on all the yatra routes.

Crowds of pilgrims rub devout shoulders during the char dham yatra as well as the Hemkund, Kailash Mansarovar and Chhota Kailash yatras, all of which go on simultaneously from May through September. The markets are laden with religious items like agar battis, rosaries, hymn books, copper vessels and photos/posters of deities. Bhajan cassettes do brisk business on all yatra routes.

A TREK FOR THE SPIRIT

The portals of the Yamnotri and Gangotri shrines close every year on the auspicious occasion of Bhaiya Dooj after Deepavali. They reopen on Akshay Tritiya, another auspicious day. Goddess Yamuna is worshipped at Yamnotri, Ganga at Gangotri, Shiva at Kedarnath and Vishnu at Badrinath.

Traditionally, the char dham yatra is undertaken from the west to the east, beginning at yamnotri. The usual starting points are Rishikesh and Haridwar, easily accessible from delhi by rail or road. From here, buses and taxis bound for the dhams are available.

Pilgrimages of various hues are at their peak in May and June in Uttarakhand with people from all parts of India and abroad venturing to pay homage at the renowned pilgrim destinations in Uttarakhand, popular as Devbhoomi or ‘Abode of the Gods’.

The yatra to Hemkund sahib begins on June 1 and ends on October 5. Pilgrims go up to Hemkund and Lakshmana Temple. Most pilgrims try to include a visit to the world famed Valley of Flowers nearby. The Kailash Mansarovar yatra begins in early June from New Delhi and culminates in the last week of September. The program for the challenging yatra, which passes through Uttarakhand and goes on to Tibet, is announced by India’s Ministry of External Affairs. Dharchula in Kumaon is the yatra’s base camp.

It grew into one of the most famous hill stations in India. Darjeeling has special delights in store for people with special interest including Nature, photography, trekking, tea, botany, ornithology and the arts.

A Unique Toy Train

By the late 1800s, Darjeeling had gained in importance as a hill station but the only means of transportation of goods to and from the town was by bullock carts using the Hill Cart Road from Siliguri. An agent of the East Bengal Railway, Franklyn Prestage, came up with the plan for a narrow gauge rail link between Siliguri and Darjeeling. Construction started in 1879 and the first train pulled by the very ‘gutsy’ little steam-engine comprising three coaches puffed into Darjeeling on July 4, 1881. The trains, nicknamed ‘Toy Trains’ of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, have been making daily journeys for over a century.

Darjeeling’s Famous Tea

Tea-drinkers all over the world must be constantly blessing the memory of the person who decided around 1840 that the climate of the Darjeeling region was very conducive to the growth of tea. Huged forest areas were cleared and tea planted. Darjeeling Tea had such a premium value in the western markets that it was soon considered to be one of the finest teas in the world.

Note : I have read this articles from a travel magazine