INDIA GUIDE
TRAVEL DESK
EVENTS
AIRLINES
SEARCH

Chindu Sreedharan

Say, folks, shall I begin with how I ended up at this beautiful, thoroughly-lonely temple on the Shankaracharya hill in Srinagar?

My editor, you see, though essentially a very nice man, gets certain unnice ideas at times. Worse still, he sees in me an able partner to carry out his, um, well, designs.

And so it happened a triple of fortnights ago. "Chindu--" he says, "Chindu, make sure you spend the August 14-15 night at the Line of Control in Kashmir. I don't care how you do it, but report what I Day 50 means there. Now get cracking!"

I got cracking. I called up the ministries concerned -- defence, home, etc -- and got responses that made me long for a Kashmiri sweater. I repeated the performance day after day till D-day minus two. The government's reply remained as chilly as ever -- my request was 'under consideration.' What to do? My editor, I knew from past experiences, didn't take missed-assignments lightly.

That was when our travel chief, who had been following my marathon telephonic struggles with a sympathetic ear, came up with a brilliant suggestion.

"Chindu," she says, "Chindu, there is this beautiful, little mandir (temple) on the Shankaracharya hill. The deity there (Lord Shiva) is verrry powerful. Why don't you promise to visit the temple?

"Besides," she added, "you have a bird's eye view of the whole city from there -- so you can do me a travel piece too!"

So I prayed. And hey, presto! the bottlenecks suddenly vanished! Before I knew it, I was back in Srinagar after enjoying some Independence shelling at the LoC, darned happy at the way things had worked out. "I will definitely climb to your mandir," I re-promised Lord Shiva and Shankaracharya, "I am sure it must be beautiful up there... "

And thus was how my colleague and I found ourself here, this hot evening.

The four-and-a-half-kilometre drive up to the foot of the temple was as uneventful as it was lonely -- on our way we met exactly one car coming down. And this, the same mandir which once upon a time -- read eight years ago -- was as crowded as any you could find in South India!

The temple, situated 305 metres above the city, was built during Jehangir's reign. The hill was originally known as Takht-i-Sulaiman or the throne of Sulaiman, and had another temple on it, built by Emperor Ashok's son Jhaluka in 200 BC. Later, however, Shankaracharya, in the course of his travels, had sat at the site for meditation. Then on, the hill came to be known after him.

Down where we started climbing, security personnel had scouted around the car, peeped into the trunk and given us long, suspicious glances -- sure, militancy is on its last leg in the valley -- or so everyone says -- but anyone going anywhere in Srinagar was bound for a check (halfhearted though it may be) at least once a day.

There were three other vehicles and about eight indifferent tourists where we stopped our car -- from here, you had to ascend some 242 steps to get to the temple. A few were casting doubtful glances at the steep climb, trying to ascertain whether it would really be worth going up.

Photographs by Jewella C Miranda

Tell us what you think of this feature