Geetanjali Krishna: Thank God for tourism!

We think of them as people like us, you know," said my garrulous driver Sachin, as I lay semi-comatose on the back seat, somewhere in the lower reaches of Kedar Valley. "Who?" I asked dully, opening my eyes a fraction. I'd told him to point out places of interest to me after we crossed Rishikesh, but the heat and hairpin bends had somewhat diminished my interest in the Garhwali landscape. It turned out Sachin was talking not about people he'd known, but of the five Pandavas. "Why do you say that?" I asked, interested in spite of my stupor. He narrated the story of how the Pandavas came to Garhwal.

"After the Mahabharata, in which the Pandavas defeated and killed their cousins and uncles in Kurukshetra, they wanted to atone for their sin of fratricide," he said. So, off they went to Kashi to pray to Shiva. But Shiva was displeased by their duplicitous role in the war. "He was deeply distressed by all the death and destruction that Kurukshetra had seen, so he came and hid here," said Sachin. "Where?" I asked. "Right here, close to where we are standing right now," he said. I looked out of the window. We were at a prosaic tea stall in Guptakashi - an unlikely place for Shiva to hide, I thought.

"In a meadow in Guptakashi," he said, "Shiva, in the form of a bull (Nandi) was grazing peacefully when Bhima, the second of the five Pandavas, spotted him," he said. Somehow, Bhima immediately recognised that this was no ordinary bull but Shiva himself. Before he could disappear again, as Shiva wasn't yet appeased, Bhima caught hold of the bull by its tail and hind legs. "Strong as he was, Bhima was no match for Shiva, who disappeared underground," narrated the driver, with a large slurp of tea. Bits of him resurfaced in five places, where the Pandavas built temples to atone their sins - Kedarnath, Tungnath, Kalpeshwar, Rudranath and Madhyamaheshwar. Penance done, Shiva appeased, they ascended to heaven beyond Kedarnath.

As I stood staring at the meadow and sipping sweet tea, I wondered how the physical and mythical sacred landscapes of Garhwal had blended with one another so organically. To Sachin, the gods whose stories he'd regaled me with, seemed as real as the people around him. He seemed offended when I said as much. "Don't you believe gods are real?" he asked me incredulously. "They're real and so is their wrath!"

Twenty-odd kilometres ahead, he stopped to show me, what he considered definitive proof that his gods were really real. It was the temple of Dhari Devi, an incarnation of Kali and protector of the four dhams, pilgrimage destinations - Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri. "Last year, when the Srinagar dam was being built, the waters of the dam would have inundated Dhari Devi, who lived in an island in the middle of the water. We pleaded with them not to build the dam there or she'd get angry, but to no avail," he said. On the night of June 16, the dam authorities lifted Dhari Devi's idol and relocated the temple to higher ground. "Within the hour, all of Uttarakhand felt the power of her wrath..." he said with a shudder.

We drove on; he rattled on and I zoned out to reflect on the simplicity of religious beliefs in these parts. As we overtook yet another busload of tourists hurtling up to Kedarnath, Sachin winked and said prosaically, "Generations of Garhwalis like me have reaped the benefits of these stories. So we should thank god for the myths and legends of Garhwal, which entice so many tourists and pilgrims to visit here."