|
Sacred Hindu icicle melts
02/07/2007 19:40 - (SA)
Izhar Wani
Srinagar - Thousands of Hindu pilgrims faced disappointment on Monday after a large, sacred phallic-shaped icicle in a Himalayan cave melted - leaving people blaming body heat or global warming.
Hundreds of thousands of devotees make a long, tiring trek to the Kashmir mountains each year to look at the natural icy formation, worshipped as a symbol of the god of destruction, Shiva.
But by Monday, just the second day of the two-month-long pilgrimage, the pilgrims only had a tiny stump of ice to look at - compared to a 3.6m high formation that was there a few weeks ago.
"The Shivlingam (Shiv phallus) has melted down completely," said Arun Kumar, a senior official of the pilgrimage board.
A variety of factors, from body heat to global warming, were cited as possible causes for its disappearance in the cave located 3 800 metres above sea level.
"Hot and humid weather, besides global warming, are responsible for the early melting," said Kumar, without elaborating.
Heavily guarded
The pilgrimage route to one of Hinduism's top religious sites is heavily guarded by Indian security forces to prevent possible attacks by rebels fighting New Delhi's rule in Kashmir.
Local papers speculated that a glacier above the Amarnath cave was melting - making the interior warmer - in line with glacier retreat in the Himalayas linked to global warming.
In previous years the ice form has remained in place until August, but last year the ice shrine failed to form at all - officials controversially put an artificial one in its place - while this year it melted two months early.
A local geologist blamed the number of hot, sweaty bodies visiting the cave.
"So many people are going inside. There used to be a few thousand, now there are scores of thousands," said Mohammed Ismail Bhat.
"It is a small space and they are repeatedly breathing warm air out. That is for sure going to affect the temperature."
The annual pilgrimage in insurgency-hit Kashmir draws hundreds of thousands of chanting devotees, who scramble up treacherous paths and brave the risk of Islamic militant attacks.
- AFP
|
News
