Kedarnath Temple

It is believed that after the Mahabharata war, the Pandavas, seeking release from the sin of killing their own kin and teacher, came to the Himalayas for Lord Shiva's darshan. Displeased with them, Shiva took the form of a bull and burrowed into the earth, but Bhima caught hold of his hump, which is worshipped at Kedarnath to this day as a triangular rock formation. Pleased at last, Shiva granted the Pandavas his vision and freed them of their sin.

Among the twelve Jyotirlingas, Kedarnath is Uttarakhand's only one and the highest-situated in the Himalayas. It is also the first and foremost of the Panch Kedar, a group of five Shiva temples, each dedicated to a different part of Shiva's bull-form, where he is worshipped in the form of his hump.

Kedarnath Temple stands at an altitude of about 3,583 metres, reached by a roughly 16-18 km trek, mule ride, or helicopter journey from Gaurikund. Owing to heavy snowfall, the temple's doors are closed through winter and reopened around Akshaya Tritiya, with darshan possible only until Kartik Purnima each year.

The temple's architecture follows the ancient North Indian style and is built from massive stone blocks, which withstood the devastating 2013 Kedarnath flash floods and kept the temple's core structure intact. Devotees usually visit Kedarnath before or alongside Badrinath, since both are part of Uttarakhand's own regional 'Chota Char Dham' circuit (Yamunotri-Gangotri-Kedarnath-Badrinath), note that this is a distinct, regional tradition from the original, all-India Char Dham (Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri, Rameswaram) established by Adi Shankaracharya.