Bengali Hindu pilgrims and travellers to the Himalayas from the late 19th to the late 20th century

摘要

Bengali travel narratives have a rich repertoire of works that focus on travel as pilgrimage undertaken to the Himalayas, especially to the famous holy shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath and to Kailasa and Manas Sarovar. This paper focuses on the changing nature of Himalayan pilgrimage down the centuries. The first part discusses two lesser known pilgrimages to the Himalayas where two monks of the Ramakrishna Mission order, namely Swami Akhandananda and Swami Apurvananda undertake their journey in 1887 and 1939 respectively. Their travelogues were published many years later by Udbodhan Karyalaya, the official mouthpiece of the Mission. In both the narratives we get details of the travails of travelling in those times with very little financial security and material comfort. The second part of the paper discusses issues raised by Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay in his travelogue Pancha Kedar where he tells us how, with changing times, the manner of travelling to the same holy places have undergone remarkable changes. The discussion then focuses upon another observation by the famous writer Narayan Sanyal who in his book Pather Mahaprasthan laments the demise of the original trekking routes of the pilgrims. In 1986, Saroj Kumar Bandyopadhyay visited Kailasa and Manas Sarovar and his narrative describing his month long package trip vouches for the changes that both the pilgrim and the pilgrimage had undergone to the same places almost half a century later.