Divine odyssey Human pitfalls

Controversies over crowd management have marred the annual pilgrimage to Sabarimala this season. Hiran Unnikrishnan treks up the hill shrine along the Vandiperiyar route to take stock of the situation.

Controversies over crowd management have marred the annual pilgrimage to Sabarimala this season. Hiran Unnikrishnan treks up the hill shrine along the Vandiperiyar route to take stock of the situation.

The road lined with trees opens from Vandiperiyar, a sleepy hill station in Kerala’s Idukki district, and meanders across an intricate network of tea plantations. A 12-km journey takes you down a village track that opens to a valley.

‘Sathram’, reads a destination board a few metres from the entry point. The crowd of men in black attires is unmindful of the intermittent drizzle that makes the December evening chill harsher. They wait patiently in front of a rusty cabin from which a few policemen are taking down their names and personal details in a register. Those who have given their names are moving around parked vehicles and a temple nearby while some head towards the makeshift shops that have come up just outside the ground. 

“Come in swamis, have some tea,’’ Thilakan, a tea vendor, is beckoning the pilgrims heading for Sree Dharma Sastha Temple at Sabarimala as they walk by in motely groups. The ongoing pilgrimage season at Sabarimala has been quite productive for the 44-year-old, a native of Sathram. “More and more devotees are flowing in probably to avoid the long queues along the trekking path from the Pampa,” he says.  

The Pampa route, which opens whenever the temple opens, is the most crowded, while two more routes -- one requiring an arduous day-night trek along a forest trail from Erumely and another taking about six hours of trek across a few forested hills from Vandiperiyar -- are opened during the annual pilgrim season in December-January.

Sathram village, which derives its name from a wayside lodging facility that existed here during the royal era, serves as the last stop-over point on the Vandiperiyar route that meanders through deep forests and rolling grasslands part of the Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR) to reach Sabarimala. It was the preferred route of the royal family of erstwhile Travancore.

“The buzz around this old route is surely escalating as evident from the numbers. As many as 45,223 people have taken this route till December 20 since it was opened on November 26,” explains Jyotish J Ozhakkal, Range Forest Officer, Azhutha.