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Dhari Devi's Wrath


On June 15th, 2013, the ancient deity of Dhari Devi was removed from her temple to be shifted to another location to facilitate the construction of a dam, which locals were opposing ever since the conception of the project with the belief that the moving of the Dhari Devi would somehow agitate Kali. Exactly on the next day a massive cloudburst and flash flood started in Uttarakhand, which devastated Kedarnath, washing the city completely away.

This may sound like a story from a comic book, but it is...


The following collection of photographs were taken between 1882 and 1883 and are in the archives of the Geological Survey of India. They provide a view of the ancient Kedarnath temple before it became a tourist attraction, when it was a lone, remote temple, only visited by a few sadhus.