Pilgrimage to Amarnath, pilgrimage to paradise

I would like to introduce the pilgrimage to Amarnath. A famous Shiva shrine in Hinduism: an icy stalagmite, the frozen lingam of Shiva.
Recent years the site had over 600.000 visitors/pilgrims a year. A growing number.

This blog entry provides background info, a photo series, several videos of the Amarnath Yatra and a link to an article on some politics and a video on environmental consequences (Paradise has some issues).

Lord Amarnath by Gangadhar Tambe Wikicommons

Interested in the legend of this perhaps more than 5000 years old shrine, of the pigeons overhearing the secret of immortality Shiva told Parvati? Click here.


The Telegraph published a photo documentary on "Thousands of Hindus make a pilgrimage to Amarnath cave in the Himalayas". You can find it here.

See also the site sacred Sites on Amarnath here.

Nirav Patel made following video of touristic visiting.

(2012)

(18:51)

See also the Three minute adventures.

(perhaps turn down music a little)

2008

(3:17)

And the counterpart, great environmental stress.

2011

NDTV

(2:11)

For years now Amarnath is also a political center of a dispute between Kashmiris and the Indian government.

See article in Foreign Affairs (partly available due to subscription)

Ian reader in this article: “Hindu nationalist organizations have encouraged Hindus to participate in the Amarnath pilgrimage as a statement of Hindu pride and in order to reinforce Indian claims to the region and to demonstrate their opposition to Pakistan’s counterclaims.”

In 2016 the Amarnath Yatra is from July 2 to August 18.

Click here for the do's and don'ts if interested in going on a pilgrimage to paradise.

The Good Friday pilgrimage to Lindisfarne

The Good Friday pilgrimage to Lindisfarne (UK)

For with the flow and ebb, its style

Varies from continent to isle;

Dry shod o'er sands, twice every day,

The pilgrims to the shrine find way;

Twice every day the waves efface

Of staves and sandalled feet the trace.

(Sir Walter Scott)

The beautiful photographs of Christopher Thomond for The Guardian are the reason this item is on the blog.
See all picture here.

The easter walking pilgrimage to Holy Island is an annual event. It was founded in 1976

Interested in crossing along the tidal pilgrim's causeway, click here.

Some background info here.

And a holiday presentation from WitchesSky show you around the place.
(7:56)

And to see the muddy walk click here.

See also a beautiful photographs on pilgrimage and procession in this Good Friday collection.

 Scott Heppell, AP


Other Good Friday Pilgrimages are for example the walk to Chimayo:
See this link.

Randoms 2016January

This blogitem is a random news tour on pilgrimage and place.

Just a few picks around the world from Lhasa, UK, Mecca, Pausanias, Tasmania, Iraq, London, UK again, Jerusalem, Franklin and Japan twice.

Different styles of pilgrimages, different meanings, different places.

Surprise yourself ;-)

Winter pilgrimage in Lhasa

"As the Spring Festival and the New Year on the Tibetan calendar approaching near, Buddhist disciples from all over Tibet have started their winter pilgrimages to Lhasa for pray and worship."
See all pictures here.

The Beatles revisited

A (commercial) pilgrimage to the Beatles cities Liverpool and London. An example of contemporary non religious pilgrimage. But perhaps still sacred.

See their site here.

Mecca for some

"Iranians are no longer allowed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.In a further escalation in tensions with Saudi Arabia, the Iranian government today banned its citizens from making the annual trip to Islam’s holiest city, a journey required at least once in a lifetime for all Muslims financially and physically capable of doing so."

See article here.

The ordinary of Pausanias

Huffington Post published an article "Pilgrimage and awe for the ordinary".

"Pausanias, a Greek geographer, was certainly interested in the so-called sacred, but the connections that Pausanias the pilgrim makes between the various locales he visits show how someone can be fascinated by the entirely ordinary or familiar."

See article here.

Jacobean Tasmania

"A new Christian pilgrimage in Tasmania's south is being touted as the Southern Hemisphere's answer to Spain's famous El Camino de Santiago."

Complete with the Jacobean scallop!

See article here.

St Elijah's Monastery of Mosul destroyed

Losing a "reminder of the roots of a religion" and pilgrimage place for centuries.
Have no words...
See articles here and here.

Gustave Doré's pilgrimage in London

"In 1869, French artist Gustave Doré began an extraordinary collaboration with the British journalist Blanchard Jerrold. Together, over four years, they produced a landmark account of the deprivation and squalor of mid-Victorian London"

See the pictures here.

Also in the UK a 

"Pilgrim completes 'medieval'

journey from Southampton to Canterbury"

He carried however some non medieval items like an ipad...

See article here.

Pilgrimage road to Jerusalem identified?

".. archaeologists Yotam Tepper and Yigal Tepper describe what they believe to be a stone road in Israel on which ancient Jews would make their Jerusalem pilgrimage."

See article here.

Pilgrimage festival Franklin

"The Pilgrimage concept is based on traversing the musical and cultural influences of Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and throughout the Mississippi Delta, finding its home in Franklin."

See the site of this september 2016 country music festival here.

88 x Japan

This blog had earlier items on pilgrimages in Japan.

(Click on label Japan and Shikoku on the right for these)

"Japan hopes to follow Camino de Santiago's path to marketing success with 750-mile Buddhist pilgrimage"

See article on the 88 temple route (Shikoku) here.

Healing pilgrimage in Japan

"The Tamagawa baths, situated in the mountains of Japan’s Akita prefecture, have long been believed to hold medicinal powers. Today, the area attracts cancer patients from all over the country, who hope that the naturally acidic hot springs and radioactive stones might heal them."
See the article and the photographs of photographer Tsutomu Yamagata here.

2016

Just a few days ago I was in this 'galerie d'orange'. A place at the end of a pilgrimage route, a place near a cathedral. Ending 2015, entering 2016.

Thank you, dear reader of Pilgrimage and Place.

See you next year.

Rural flight

Perhaps half of all abandoned villages in Spain are in Galicia. As processes of aging, rural flight (& urbanisation) and bad (economic) perspectives continue, this development will increase. Will immigration or tourism have an impact?

I collected some fine articles, a book and a movie on the subject.

So, if interested, go ahead ;-)

Population increase (red) or decrease (blue):

(Source and also population map of Europe on CityMetric here (Jun 2015))

Have a look at this 13:11 documentary on Galician Ghost villages published by Celtico on the situation of the living landscape and on a family started to live in a former abandoned village.

See also this article in NPR (Aug 2015)

In Spain, Entire Villages Are Up For Sale — And They're Going Cheap

or this one in Christian Science Monitor (Aug 2015)

For sale in Spanish 'paradise': entire villages. Cheap.

or this one in Financial Times (Dec 2014)

A Spanish exodus to the cities leaves a desert in its wake
(FT subscription field may popup)

or this pictoral impression of Molina de Aragon, the least-populated place in Europe in MailOnline (Mar 2015)

This is in contrast with research from CheckmyBus (nov 2015) where The Camino de Santiago with place five rates among the top ten of tourist attractions in Spain, with Santiago de Compostela on the sixth place (LaVoxdeGalicia).

More information in

The Depopulation of Rural Spain in the Twentieth Century

by Fernando Collantes and Vicente Pinilla, 2011

(book review here)

In 'Reducing Depopulation in Rural Spain: The Impact of Immigration' the authors (Fernando Collantes, Vicente Pinilla, Luis Antonio Sáez and Javier Silvestre, 2013) discuss research on the impact of immigration that could lead to substantial reduction.

(Here available online)

Immigration and depopulation is also subject of the article 

'Silent blight in a countryside of empty homes and shut shops'

in The Guardian (Aug 2015):

"Young people are leaving rural areas of Europe for the cities at a time when birth rates are at historic lows. As the countryside empties, should rising immigration be seen as a solution, not a problem?"

(Click here to see)

(And for Dutch audience a link to a report from Henk Jan Slomp on depolulation in Spain, specific Matarraña, Teruel (2004))

Camino as model for Shikoku.

Some time ago Pilgrimageandplace highlighted the Shikoku pilgrimage in Japan. (See here)

The route of the 88 temples.

The Kumano Kodō, another set of pilgrimage routes in Japan, already has connections with the Camino the Santiago. And is also on the World Heritage List.

(See my other blog to meet the Kumano Kodō!)

"The Japanese government is hoping to take advantage of the Camino de Santiago to develop the niche religious tourism sector."

"The head of the Galicia regional government, Alberto Núñez Feijoó, and the governor of Japan’s Kagawa province, on the central island of Shikoku, recently signed an agreement to work together to promote the Shikoku Pilgrimage, known as the Way of the 88 Temples."

"The Japanese government is hoping to take advantage of the Camino de Santiago to develop a niche religious tourism sector, creating its own pilgrimage circuit by uniting the two routes. The hope is that it will help boost the country’s ailing economy, as well as opening up what is still a largely insular society that has one of the lowest immigration levels in the developed world.

As with the Camino de Santiago, Japanese tourism authorities will be hoping to attract visitors also interested in trying local cuisine. The local Udon noodle and seaweed soup that comes in dozens of varieties is among the best-known dishes in the region. The area also has its own native species of chicken, as well as its particular way of preparing tuna and sea bass sashimi."
(source article see below)

See full article 'Japan looks to Camino de Santiago as model for its own pilgrimage' route from ALICIA GONZÁLEZ in ElPais here.

Pilgrimage and Place also just spotted the full documentary series from Bruce Feiler on Sacred Journeys with also a part on Shikoku-Henro. See here.

Sacred Journeys, Bruce Feiler

Last year I had an item on the documentary series of
Bruce Feiler on Sacred Journeys.

I found the series is available on Youtube.
(Jan 2016: Movies in this blogitem are removed from Youtube.
Where available alternatives are listed)

So, like to introduce them again to you!

Faith
in Lourdes,
on the Shikoku,
in Jerusalem,
in Mecca,
on the Kumbh Mela
and Osun Osogbo in Central Africa.

Part 1, Lourdes France

(54:30)
Alternate location here.
Another alternate location here.

Part 2, Shikoku Japan

(54:30)
Alternate location here.
Also here.

Part 3, Jerusalem Israel

(1:34:15)
Alternate location here.

Part 4, Mecca Saudi Arabia

(54:30)
Alternate location here.

Part 5, Kumbh Mela, India

(1:35:20)
Alternate location here.

Part 6, Osun Osogbo Nigeria

(1:32:55)
Alternate location here.

Homepage of the series is here.
Earlier Blog entry here.


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