Kedarnath tragedy: Do people willingly put themselves at risk on pilgrimages?

The worst affected people by the Uttarakhand tragedy have been the thousands of pilgrims who were either inside or on their way to the temple town of Kedarnath.

The Kedarnath trek is part of Chota Char Dhams (four minor pilgrimage sites) for Hindus and the temple of Kedarnath is located in a nagar panchayat in Rudraprayag district. The town is located near the Chorabari Glacier, which forms the the head of the Mandakini river. This closeness to the glacier also made it the worst hit due to the incessant rains which eventually led to the flash floods.

An interesting point that has come up in reader comments on Firstpost, is the difficulty of getting to such holy places . Kedarnath for instance, is only accessible by foot through difficult terrain, although a privileged few can make the journey via chopper.

Given the known difficulty, what is it about such pilgrimages that make people put not only themselves at risk, but also their children, the aged and pregnant women?

These are some of the comments we received:

K Madhukar:

After reading this, I wonder which sadist built a temple in such a place. What is the motive? I don’t think it is God’s design that His devotees trek to this place should be as hard as it can be.

Aditya Kadambi:

I am not religious, but it’s a beautiful, peaceful, clean and green place. The idea is to keep it like that while moving from horribly low incomes with no infrastructure to high ones with consistent high quality infrastructure(unlike what came up in Uttarakhand).

Narsimha:

Somebody may have built the temple, but did he made a diktat that every hindu should visit these temples once in their lifetime, however hard may be, like Mecca? Is it made compulsory in hindu scriptures to visit these temples?

Then why do pilgrims take all the hardships to visit these places? and what precautions should governments take to protect the pilgrims and the temples? Its easy to give names to somebody, but you are actually giving names to the devotion of countless pilgrims. And Himalayas are said to be abode of Lord Shiva, and its natural that these temples would be located near his abode.

Wiseman:

The point of a pilgrimage is voluntary suffering, in fact suffering is the pilgrimage, watching the deity is just the cherry on top of the cake. But that point eludes most people nowadays, getting on a Tata Sumo and doing a char dham in 9 days is not a pilgrimage, it’s a sightseeing tour.