The Road to Kedarnath — Can I Love What Is?

Even now, when I close my eyes, flashes of that pilgrimage return like scenes from a movie.

It wasn't the Himalayas that first took my breath away.

It was the road leading there.

Inspired by The Road to Dharma documentary series, I found myself making the same pilgrimage to Kedarnath—one of India's four sacred sites, where the ancient Temple of Lord Shiva stands high in the Himalayas.

Reaching it required a two-day journey from Rishikesh to Guptkashi, followed by an eight-hour bus ride along winding Himalayan roads carved into steep mountain cliffs.

Calling it a road is generous.

It was a narrow ribbon clinging to the mountainside, with sheer drops disappearing into misty valleys below. Monsoon rains had washed mud across parts of the road, and more than once I found myself holding my breath as two buses somehow squeezed past each other on a single lane.

The following morning, we arrived at Gaurikund, where the real pilgrimage began.

Twenty kilometers.

Nearly 5,000 feet of climbing.

One muddy trail leading to a temple I had only seen in a documentary.

As I began the climb, I passed elderly pilgrims slowly fulfilling a dream they had waited a lifetime to realize.

Some horses and mules strained beneath enormous steel beams, while others patiently carried pilgrims whose legs could no longer make the journey.

Basket carriers, some smaller than the passengers they carried, leaned forward with extraordinary strength, supporting another person's pilgrimage with nothing more than a woven chair strapped to their backs and a band resting across their foreheads.

As I walked, a quiet question kept repeating itself.

Can I love what I see?

Can I love the sight of mules carrying impossible loads up the mountain?

Can I love watching a man labor beneath the weight of another human being?

Can I love a trail where every step sank into mud mixed with manure?

Can I love the seemingly chaotic movement of pilgrims, porters, merchants, horses, and mules, all making their way up the same mountain?

Can I love what feels uncomfortable?

Step after step, I noticed my mind quietly judging, comparing, and imagining how things should be instead of simply seeing what was.

Hours later, I finally reached Kedarnath, where my friend Gabriel greeted me with a smile.

As we embraced, a wave of gratitude washed over me.

Grateful that my body had carried me there.

Grateful that I had finally arrived.

Grateful that a place I had once seen only in a documentary had become part of my own life.

Before sunrise the next morning, hundreds of pilgrims stood patiently in line, waiting for a few precious moments inside Kedarnath Temple.

I expected magnificent statues like those I had admired in temples throughout Southeast Asia.

Instead...

Kedarnath was astonishingly simple.

At the heart of the temple stood a naturally formed stone, revered as a manifestation of Lord Shiva.

For a brief moment, my mind quietly whispered,

"Is this all?"

As I stepped out of the temple, something had quietly shifted.

The pilgrimage had revealed something much closer.

My own mind.

How quickly it judged.

How easily it created separation between beautiful and ugly, sacred and ordinary, acceptable and unacceptable, and how often it wanted reality to be different from what it was.

The question that had followed me up the mountain remained:

Can I love what I see?

I still don’t know the answer.

But somehow, every muddy step, every pilgrim, every mule, every basket carrier, and every mountain stone kept inviting me to ask the question.

Perhaps…

that was the pilgrimage.

Kedarnath: The mountain that asked me one question: "Can I love what I see?"

Some carried their own journey. Others carried someone else’s.

Sometimes faith is carried on another person's shoulders.

Not every burden is visible.

The destination wasn't the temple. It was seeing the world with different eyes.