Thousands of Hindu devotees, including women and children, have relocated to Pahalgam and Baltal, two base-camps of Amarnath pilgrimage, days ahead of a cavalcade of 73 vehicles carrying the first batch of 2,096 yatries was officially flagged off in Jammu on Tuesday.
“We reached here at the weekend and since have been enjoying rafting, angling and other sport. We also went to Aru (a meadow surrounded by thick forests of pine near Pahalgam) and before that visited Mughal Gardens in Srinagar, paid obeisance at Shankara-charya temple and briefly did water skiing in Dal Lake,” said Manoj Kumar Savarkar from Surat as he and his spouse and two children got to Lidder embankment after enjoying white water rafting in Pahalgam on Tuesday.
Tourism officials at the Valley’s premier resort said it has witnessed unprecedented rush of holiday makers over the past few weeks. “For the past few days, thousands of intending Amarnath pilgrims too arrived making it difficult for us to arrange night accommodation for them. On Sunday, over 50,000 local Kashmiri day-trippers also turned up and Pahalgam was livened up as it used to be in summer prior to the start of militancy,” said Firdous Ahmed. Some visitors complained they were overcharged by hoteliers and ponywallas.
The pilgrims will be allowed to begin their foot journey through rugged hills to Amarnath to pay obeisance to the Shivlingum at the 12,729-foot-high cave-shrine on Wednesday morning both from Pahalgam and Baltal base-camps, 96-km north of Srinagar.
With that the two-and-half month-long pilgrimage will officially commence. It will conclude on August 13, coinciding with the Rakhsha Bandhan.
Meanwhile, a pilgrim from Rajasthan died due to cardiac arrest at Baltal base-camp on Tuesday, reports our special correspondent. Fifty-five-year-old Rajinder Singh, a resident of Jagdamba Nagar in Jaipur, was waiting along with others to be allowed to begin the foot journey to the cave-shrine when he suffered a massive heart attack and died soon thereafter.