Click to play videoSrinagar: They came for peace and tranquility but are leaving angry and disappointed. The pilgrims’ progress in Amarnath has been cut short by the vagaries of nature.
Neelam is one of the many pilgrims who travelled covered a thousand miles only for the holy Amarnath yatra. Having flown in from Birmingham (UK), Neelam was in for a tough time.
First the rains had her stranded in Baltal for three days and then – when she had braved all bad weather – she got to the shrine only to know that the ice lingam had melted away.
“They did not tell me the ice ling was melting. They should have informed us, I missed the darshan. We spent a lot of money coming here and there’s no proper arrangement here” she says.
The family says the journey couldn't have gone more wrong. “We did not know the Shivlingam was melting. We are going back to Punjab and will come back when Lor Shiva calls us back. He is upset with us right now, I guess,” says a pilgrim Ashwani Walia.
But some other pilgrims are more optimistic. “When the water in the refrigerator can freeze, the lingam will also solidify,” says a pilgrim.
More than 10,000 devotees started the tough pilgrimage on Sunday and the shrine board is expecting more than four lakh pilgrims this year.
But with the main ice lingam gone and the other two lingams thawing fast, those hopes could be short-lived.
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