If one stands on a newly-built bank along a quietly flowing Mandakini near Kedarnath today it would be hard to visualise the river's fury on the night of June 16, 2013 when its swirling waters swallowed thousands of lives including devotees from all over the country, priests, traders and locals.
With the tell-tale signs of the tragedy whose magnitude shook the whole nation removed out of sight and a major part of reconstruction work over, Kedarpuri is bustling with life and festivities again.
Three years after a catastrophic deluge inundated the Himalayan temple killing around 5,000 people, about 80 per cent of reconstruction work is over and the remaining 20 per cent likely to be completed in two months.
A robust infrastructure including a 50-metre-wide road leading from the river front to the shrine, a big helipad for choppers and a row of beautiful cottages for devotees has been raised in the area to impart Kedarnath its new swanky look.
This has led to a significant rise in the footfalls at the shrine during the ongoing chardham yatra season which started last month.
"In just a little over a month's time, over 2 lakh people have visited Kedarnath this season and if the trend continues we expect to receive a record seven lakh devotees at Kedarnath and nearly eight lakh at Badrinath by the end of the season," CEO of Kedarnath-Badrinath temple committee B D Singh told PTI.
"Another bounce in the number of devotees visiting the temple is expected between September and November after the rainy season is over. After the 2013 flash floods many devotees prefer to visit the temple when the risk period is over with the monsoon," he said.
Attributing the rise in the number of devotees to the "focused approach" of Chief Minister Harish Rawat who never let Kedarnath go off his list of priorities, Singh said all agencies engaged in reconstruction work at the shrine worked relentlessly for three years to give the best pilgrimage experience to people.
"Eighty per cent of reconstruction work at Kedarnath is over and the remaining 20 per cent will be done in less than two months," said Director of Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) Colonel Ajay Kothiyal, whose institute is credited with doing a lot of reconstruction work in the area.
NIM has played a crucial role in removing lakhs of tonnes of debris from Kedarnath, building a 50-metre-wide road from Mandakini river front to the shrine, a helipad and a row of 25 cottages for devotees close to the temple.
"Now we have to focus on building a three-tear safety wall around the temple and the houses of teerth purohits which is also likely to be completed by the end of the season," Kothiyal said.
Speaking of the odds amid which about 700 trained NIM personnel worked day-in and day-out at the shrine located at a height of 11,755 feet, he said the most challenging part of their work was to clear the snow under which lay tonnes of debris and align the roads.
Another challenge was to motivate our trained porters to work in those altitudes against the backdrop of a huge tragedy which had killed thousands of people.
"Many of our over terrified workmen fled from the makeshift tents only after a day as they found something eerie about the place. They used to have hallucinations about ghosts and we had to conduct especially designed programmes to ward off their unfounded fears which had only psychological basis," he said.
Kothiyal also praised Rawat for keeping Kedarnath constantly among his priorities and visiting the high-altitude shrine frequently even during winter to motivate the workforce engaged in reconstruction work in sub-zero temperatures.
"We used to work in -18 to -19 degree Celsius temperature. But the Chief Minister always stood by us making frequent visits to Kedarnath even in biting cold. Once he arrived with warm innerwears for the porters and once with loads of green vegetables for us from Dehradun. Touching gestures like these have great motivational value," he said.
