Sacred Geography: A Visual Case Study

Sacred Geography: A Visual Case Study of the Socio-Economic Infrastructure Network Behind a Hindu Pilgrimage

by Scott L. Walker, ScEdD 

Northwest Vista College & Creighton University

July 15, 2022

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Introduction

As part of the Yamuna Deep Mapping Project this is an illustrative, exploratory, critical instance case study that describes events and socio-economic networks at a Hindu pilgrimage site in Janki Chatti, Uttarakhand, India. I consider the micro-infrastructure (local human service infrastructure) required to support the immense number of pilgrims. I utilized social network analysis, participant observation, and unstructured interviews to investigate the behind-the-scenes human dynamics that go into moving thousands of people each day up a mountain canyon for 5 km (3.1 mi) to Yamunotri, a sacred Hindu temple housing the image of the goddess Yamuna, and back down 5 km.

My key areas of discussion include an explanation of the pilgrimage itself and associated terms that may be unfamiliar to some readers. I briefly outline my research methods before offering a site description and the pilgrimage route traffic to demonstrate the sheer volume of people involved in this pilgrimage. Then I outline the site and situation in closer detail and present a written and visual description of the socio-economic relationships of the one case at hand that is housed in a hotel and canteen for porters who transport people. Finally, in a textual format, I present a discussion on the external power of pilgrimages, or the lack thereof in this case, as well as the leadership authority and personal relationships between the stakeholders.

This work is part of a larger deep mapping project I conducted in June 2022. Deep mapping is an interdisciplinary, place-based, digital humanities research method. Bodenhamer et al., in Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives (2015, p. 3), explain deep mapping as:

A deep map is a finely detailed, multimedia depiction of a place and the people, animals, and objects that exist within it and are thus inseparable from the contours and rhythms of everyday life.

Deep mapping in this case involves narrative and media (images, video, audio) to add meaning and connection so we can frame and comprehend situations. A deep map, while using cartographic maps in some cases, is not just a thin map, or cartographic map. Rather, it is a body of work grounded in alternative methods of capturing and presenting data designed to create information to present a wholistic representation of place. Readers will find an image-rich presentation of one case where pilgrims were supported, quite literally, on their quest to a place of sacred geography.

Background

In Indian-originated religions or cosmologies—Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism—a yatra is a pilgrimage (Singh, 1997). These pilgrimages are often a migration to sacred places that may include mountains, rivers, or places connected with ancient stories such as those of the Hindu epics. A tirtha is a particular holy or sacred location but may also be an object to which the pilgrim, referred to as a yatri, seeks to visit. 

Tirtha site of the goddess Yamuna at Yamunotri, Uttarakhand, India.  

Thus, a tirthayatra is a journey to a sacred location where one may find the dwelling place of the divine, the place being referred to as a dhama. Dhama’s are often considered to be locations of divine power, and in the Hindu cosmos, a dwelling place of a god or goddess. A char dham (char is the number four in Hindi) is a thirthayatra to four dhamas, or holy sites. India’s primary char dham is to tirthas representing the cardinal points, to the north is Badrinath dedicated to Visnu, to the east is Puri dedicated to Krsna as Jagannatha, to the south is Ramesvaram dedicated to Rama, and to the west is Dvaraka dedicated to Krsna. Hindus have been visiting these sites for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

India’s primary char dham sites.

In the 1950s, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, a Himalayan version of thirthayatra started to become popular (Pinkney, 2013). Known as the chotta char dham, or small char dham, this pilgrimage is in the devbhumi—abode of the gods—with each of the tirthas being situated above 3,000 m (9,842 ft) in elevation. Given the mountainous landscape of the region, it was not until the independence of Uttarakhand and the advent of the Sino-Indian War of 1962 that defensive road infrastructure began to open the chotta char dham to the masses (Pinkney, 2013).

The chotta char dham consists of Badrinath, the northern tirtha of the main Indian char dham, plus those of Kadarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri. Given their elevation these dhams are only open May through October. In fact, they have a designated season opening day each year, often announced in regional newspapers (Singh, 2018). A concentration of yatris occurs in May and June, as monsoon rains reduce the pilgrimage population after that. Further, the pilgrimages have a substantial economic impact on these chotta char dham locations. Providing seasonal services to the Himalayan yatris provides a higher income to villagers in comparison to their typical occupations in the devbhumi (Gambhir, Khalid, & Sharma, 2021). It is these villagers and local/regional entrepreneurs who provide on-site support to the visiting population six-months out of the year with the two-month concentration in May and June. This is especially true for the Yamunotri yatra.

Chotta char dham in the devbhumi.

The Dharma Shastras, ancient Vedic Hindu civil and moral law (Agrawal & Dixit, 2016), guide that one should conduct their yatras barefoot (padayatra) without transportation or even umbrellas. This is a form of tapasya, or spiritual practice of self-regulation that contributes to one’s moral strength of mind and body. Nevertheless, this is rarely followed in what is fast becoming a secular cultural tourism event or a form of religious tourism in lieu of a spiritual undertaking. These notions of pilgrimage as tourism are well documented, and I will not go into it here other than to note that the numbers of yatris are increasing due in part to macro-infrastructure development in the form of paved highway access, char dham tourism packaging, proliferation of hotels and chattis (guesthouses), and Uttrakhand Tourism Board promotion (see Apollo et al., 2020; Aukland, 2017; Collins-Kreiner, 2010, Dudeja, Bhatt, & Biyani, 2017; Gambhir, Khalid, & Sharma, 2021; Pinkney, 2013; Uttarakhand Tourism Board, 2022).

A padayatri.

In lieu of a purist’s barefoot walking padayatra, most yatris choose to wear shoes, take umbrellas or ponchos, and arrive on site in Janki Chatti, the staging area 5 kms (3.11 mi) from the Yamunotri temple, by tourist bus, personal automobile, or jeep taxi. However, the trek from the community of Janki Chatti where the road ends, to Yamunotri is up a canyon with a crowded, steep, switch backing trail and steps gaining 550 m (1,805 ft) in elevation to the temple that sits at 3,116 m (10,223 ft) elevation. A substantial portion of yatris choose to ride a vendor-supplied horse or mule (ghoda), ride in a four-man carried palanquin (locally called a doli or palki), or ride on the back of a Nepali man carrying the yatri in a tumpline basket. These forms of transportation up the mountain are extremely popular and generate substantial income to the local villagers and immigrant Nepalis. The micro-infrastructure (local human service infrastructure) required to support the immense number of yatris is what this paper is about.

 

Modes of transportation along the yatra trail. (Left) Basket wala, a Nepalese man carrying a woman. (Top R) Four men carry a woman on a doli. (Bottom R) Muleteers, or ghoda walas, guide their mules with riders.

No literature exists on the infrastructure that supports human transportation up to Yamunotri from Janki Chatti. Dhyani, Gairola, and Dimri (2020) addressed canteen and restaurant employee’s soft skills in relation to Yamunotri yatri satisfaction, but their study was in relation to promoting culinary tourism along the route. This paper presents an exploratory case study that utilized social network analysis, participant observation, and unstructured interviews to investigate the behind-the-scenes human dynamics that go into moving thousands of people each day up a mountain canyon for 5 km and back down 5 km.

To give scale to the number of pilgrims I am referring to, in 2017 the total number of yatris to Yamunotri alone was estimated at 390,000 (3.9 lakh)(Singh, 2018). The total number of yatris on the whole chotta char dham was 3,000,000 (30 lakh)(Singh, 2018). While COVID pandemic numbers, between 2020 and 2021, were certainly lower, in 2022 when I conducted this study, there were no COVID-oriented restrictions placed upon workers or yatris.

Video showing the number of people on their pilgrimage.

Methods

For this study I selected a dual-faceted case study approach: (1) one that is both exploratory, to identify initial perspectives on a new topic and study area, and (2) of critical instance, to investigate a situation specific to the Yamunotri char dham without any expectations of generalizability. Case study is the…

 …exploration of a phenomenon within its context using a variety of data sources. This ensures that the issue is not explored through one lens, but rather a variety of lenses which allows for multiple facets of the phenomenon to be revealed and understood. (Baxter & Jack, 2008, p. 544)

 Likewise, case study is useful for addressing “how” and “why,” in addition to “what” is happening in a particular case (Yin, 2009). This is especially true for investigations in which there is no need for, or intention of, controlling subjects (i.e., non-experimental, without a control group or experimental group). Further, the study is contemporarily set and in the context of a given place (Baxter & Jack, 2008).

The case at hand was an exploration of the network of personal yatri transportation service workers, to include general input and output, as centered on one worker boarding facility in Janki Chatti, Uttarakhand, India during the second busiest month of the chotta char dham to the Yamunotri holy site.

 

Hilltop panoramic view of area of study with Vikash Nautiyal for scale. Click image for larger view. 

The investigative methods I used included unstructured interviews, participant observation, non-participant observation, and content analysis. I lived for 12 days in June 2022, with the men who board themselves and their mules at the 19-year-old, 27-room Himachali Dharmshala Hotel and Canteen. For purposes of validation, I consolidated interview and observation information in a diagram (Figure 1). I then sat down with Vikash Nautiyal, upon whom the diagram centers, and he spent an hour with me verifying that the relationships I present here were, in fact, how he perceived them too. I made some changes and additions upon his suggestion and the result is what you are reading. Additionally, I contacted him through text message with follow-up items and further corroboration of facts as I drafted this document.

Findings

Site Description

Like the other three chotta char dham sites, Yamunotri, Uttarakhand, India is off the beaten path for most foreign visitors (Apollo et al., 2020). The dham itself is situated 5 km past the end of the road for vehicles. The vehicular road ends at Janki Chatti, where a market and hotel community with poor water and electrical infrastructure and even poorer wastewater and municipal solid waste infrastructure exists. In Janki Chatti there was tourist bus parking, automobile parking, and jeep taxi parking. Across the river in Kharsali there were three helicopter pads for the wealthier yatris to fly in from Dehradun. 

Tourist bus parking in Janki Chatti.

Overloaded jeep. This one carrying a palanquin,
 likely with a village deity for washing in the
Yamuna River.

Set-route, eight- and ten-passenger Mahindra four-wheel drive utility vehicles referred to locally as “jeeps” were commonly used as local transportation throughout the mountain region of Uttarakhand. Typically, they were overloaded with 10 to 14 passengers and roof-top luggage. On occasion there would be riders on the roof.

Immediately after exiting any form of vehicular transportation passengers were beset upon by what might be referred to as porters or guides, depending on the mode of transport they were offering. The porters’ aims were to secure passengers for one of three types of personal transportation: (1) muleback or horseback, (2) palanquin, or (3) tumpline basket. A horse is called a ghoda (though there was no differentiation between a horse and a mule) and its guide is referred to as a ghoda wala. Each mule typically had one guide. On more rare occasions two mules tied one in front of the other would have one guide. A simple, uncovered wooden palanquin, usually carried by four men, although some designs were for three men, were referred to locally as a doli (less common was palki). Likewise, the men who carry the dolis were referred to as doli wala. Finally, some people were carried up to Yamunotri in a large tumpline basket on the back of a single Nepalese man. The basket was simply referred to as a basket, and the porters are called basket wala.

Traffic along the pilgrimage route to Yamunotri.

The main thoroughfare through Janki Chatti inclines through tourist hotels and shops consisting of temporary, makeshift restaurants/canteens, vegetable stands, junk food stands, makeshift shelters for the numerous walas, and mule stables. In a few incidences a canteen for the walas, their sleeping pads, and their mules were in the same black plastic-tarp tent shelter; that is, they ate and slept in the same shelter as their mules. The pathway was about 2 to 2.5 m (6 to 8 ft) wide, open sewage might run alongside in a gutter and mule manure typically covered much of the pathway. This was the case for the entire 5 km trek. Some places where the mules were watered were more heavily laden with fecal material because the mules stood in one place for extended periods. Millions of flies abounded along the path, in the shops, canteens, restaurants, and boarding rooms. Auditorily there was a cacophony of jingling mule bells (most mules were wearing one to six bells around its neck), people talking, ghoda walas yelling commands to obstinate mules, and coughing. In fact, one of the first things I noticed upon arrival was a substantial majority of the walas coughing, mouths uncovered. It was the sound that typically woke me each morning around 4:30 am to 5:00 am when the walas began their workday.

      

Shri Yamuna Raj Niketuna Himachali Dharmshala Hotel.

The two-story Shri Yamuna Raj Niketuna Himachali Dharmshala Hotel, the central location of my study, was rustic by most standards. For instance, the bathrooms consisted of a squat toilet, a bucket, a pitcher, two cold-water spigots, and little more. They tended to be dirty with peeling or moldy paint and they never dried because of the lack of air movement and room temperatures that rarely rose above 13°C (55°F). They smelled foul, likely due to the plumbing piping the septic tank odor back into the bathroom. Rooms held for paying yatri guests tended to have platform beds with thin mattresses, thick blankets, one electric ceiling bulb, and one electric outlet. The rooms rented to the walas had no beds, only thin mattresses lining the floor. They typically housed six to seven men. Mules were stabled behind the hotel or in the building’s outdoor nooks next to the rooms. During the evening sometimes they grazed in front of the hotel on barely existent grass or on hay brought in by their owner. The hotel building was situated about 9 m (30 ft) from the main pathway to Yamunotri. Most of the pilgrimage foot traffic passed directly in front of the hotel each day.

Makeshift mule stables behind hotel.

Canteen in front of hotel. Pilgrim trail is the sidewalk 
directly in front of the canteen.

The canteen was a 6 m by 6 m (20 ft by 20 ft) concrete structure built into the hillside in front of the hotel. The front of the doorless structure opened directly onto the yatri pathway. On occasion one would have to shoo a wandering cow from coming into the building. Another side opened to a small ravine laden with trash and all means of organic and inorganic waste. One man, the canteen’s cook, slept in the canteen on a platform, at his feet a chimney-less fire pit, and beyond that a depression with running water where the dirty dishes, cookware, and utensils were rinsed. Contrary to the description from Dhyani, Gairola, and Dimri (2020) I found the canteen unsanitary with thousands of flies on the tables and on the food, as well as dishes simply being rinsed in cold water, food scraps being thrown out the window into the ravine. I use the word “canteen” throughout because that is what the walas and the tenant called the kitchen structure—its purpose being more to feed the walas than to feed the public. A simple, yet robust, evening meal was homemade each night and served to about eight to ten walas at a time who sat at one of the two tables in the canteen. There were also candies, cigarettes, soft drinks, sweet breads, potato chips and similar snacks available, as well as a variety of cookies and packaged bakery-like items. Coffee and chai were available nearly all the time.

For 12 days I lived in a room in the hotel next door to the walas and ate with the walas. I observed them from early in the morning to late into the evening. The canteen and the porch of my room were also good locations from which to observe the yatris as they passed by on their way to the temple.

Typical scene of yatris crossing the bridge in front of my hotel.

Yatri and Wala Traffic

To set the stage for the sheer number of pilgrims and guides/porters involved in the yatra I observed and counted the human/animal traffic that passed over the bridge on the pathway next to the hotel where all foot traffic was funneled. On each occasion I observed for 15 minutes at 8 am when traffic began to get heavy. My sampling days represent a convenience sample of days I was not engaged in other activities at that time of day. Tables 1 through 4 present the data broken down by transportation type and the number of people, both yatris and walas. 

Table 1

Fifteen-minute observations of foot traffic on route to Yamunotri

June 13, 2022, Monday, 8:00 am. Sunny, 21°C (70°F).
Mules with a Rider	Dolis with a Passenger	Basket with a Passenger	Persons on Foot	Total Row
80	21	7	108	216
Walas
80	84	7	--	171
Total Column
160	105	14	108
Grand Total				387
Extrapolation over 1 hour				1,548

 

Table 2

Fifteen-minute observations of foot traffic on route to Yamunotri

June 19, 2022. Sunday, 8:00 am. Sunny, 21°C (70°F).
Mules with a Rider	Dolis with a Passenger	Basket with a Passenger	Persons on Foot	Total Row
91	8	6	259	364
Walas
91	32	6	--	129
Total Column
182	40	12	259
Grand Total				493
Extrapolation over 1 hour				1,972

 

Table 3

Fifteen-minute observations of foot traffic on route to Yamunotri

June 20, 2022. Monday, 8:00 am. Cloudy, 22°C (71.6°F).
Mules with a Rider	Dolis with a Passenger	Basket with a Passenger	Persons on Foot	Total Row
77	2	0	117	196
Walas
77	8	0	--	85
Total Column
154	10	0	117
Grand Total				281
Extrapolation over 1 hour				1,124

 

Table 4

Fifteen-minute observations of foot traffic on route to Yamunotri

June 22, 2022. Wednesday, 8:00 am. Sunny, 20°C (68°F).
Mules with a Rider	Dolis with a Passenger	Basket with a Passenger	Persons on Foot	Total Row
53	16	2	60	131
Walas
53	64	2	--	119
Total Column
106	80	4	60
Grand Total				250
Extrapolation over 1 hour				1,000

 

In 2011, Aitken wrote of the Yamunotri char dham, “Luckily the younger sister of the Ganga does not draw as large a crowd as the other dhams and in many respects Yamnotri [sic] still maintains the unfrenetic charm of the old pilgrim trails” (para. 12). Much has changed. It is evident there were a substantial number of people moving through Janki Chatti on their way to Yamunotri each day. The period when I observed was coming off the busiest month of May (before monsoon rains begin) and was on a slow decline due to the monsoon arrival in mid-June. This decline was also evident in the number of walas who were being served in the restaurant too according to Shiwa Nautiyal, the cook who prepared the meals.

What is also evident in this census is the number of walas involved in accommodating the yatris. On average, in 15 minutes, 75 mule guides passed by leading their animals with riders. If extrapolated over an hour that is 301 ghoda walas. Take the three busiest hours of 8 am to 11 am each day, before traffic slowed somewhat, and one could estimate over 900 men with animals serving pilgrims. In all likelihood there were probably double that many men and mules going up the valley each day, if not more. A complete and accurate census would be beneficial, but extrapolation of 15-minute observations presents the fact there were a considerable number of men working and encamped in Janki Chatti in June 2022. Add to that the doli walas and basket carrying men and a three-hour estimate would be 1,500 men transporting people. Throughout the day, while this traffic slowed, it never stopped, thus one might estimate conservatively there were over 3,000 men to house and feed in Janki Chatti in June 2022, not including the thousands of yatris, some of whom stayed in Janki Chatti overnight.

 Canteens, Stables, and Wala Housing

Author eating with family from Himachal Pradesh.

Hotels like Himachali Dharmshala are part of the infrastructure required to house and feed the walas and their animals. Himachali Dharmshala is not a tourist hotel, however, it did serve to house lower socioeconomic yatris who often brought their own kitchenware and prepared their own food. During one occasion an extended family of over 10 people from Himachal Pradesh, a state adjacent to Uttarakhand, occupied two hotel rooms (men in one, women in another) and they took over the porch to socialize, prepare, and eat meals.

Men eating in the canteen.

Walas also housed in makeshift black-plastic tent-like structures that were often open to the street. This was where they ate, slept, and stabled their animals. These shelters had no bathrooms or running water. Community water spigots served as places for them to wash, brush teeth, wash dishes, and fill water buckets. Networks of haphazard wires provided electricity for light, usually one or two single bulbs. A variety of other shelters accommodated men. For example, there was one strip of corrugated roll-door rooms built into a hillside that appeared to be meant for shops, but they housed men with their animals below their overhanging building. I observed very few women (less than five) and even fewer children camped in the worker settlement.

 

Typical black plastic makeshift shelter.

In order to get a scope of these room and board structures I walked a 1 km (0.6 mi) section of the main pathway through Janki Chatti at 8 pm when many of the walas were settling in to eat after putting up their mules, palanquins, and baskets. On either side of the path, I counted 41 temporary shelters, not including tourist hotels, where men were actively eating or gathered around a table or a fire talking. That amounted to one shelter/canteen every 24 m (79 ft). All in all, Janki Chatti had roughly 3 km (1.86 mi) of occupied roads or paths where walas set up temporary shelters for the yatra season. Estimated, that amounted to 123 shelter/canteens. I also observed men sleeping on the roofs and balconies of hotels and just about any other nook or cranny from where they could shelter from the rain.

Makeshift shelter for men and their mules.

 Shri Yamuna Raj Niketuna Himachali Dharmshala Hotel and Canteen

Up to this point I have described the setting of Janki Chatti and the human infrastructure dedicated solely to moving people up to the tirtha and back. At this point I will focus on one hotel and canteen that caters to walas. Shri Yamuna Raj Niketuna Himachali Dharmshala Hotel (Himachali Dharmshala) was built in 2003. The rooms each have a plaque over the door with information about persons who funded the individual rooms. The hotel was built primarily through donations and in its heyday must have been a magnificent sight reflecting new yellow paint, a traditional roof overhang pattern decoration, perched upon a slope overlooking a ravine and bridge where everyone on their yatra passes. The hotel had a clear view of the snow-covered Bandarpunch massive, a three-peak mountain range, with Bandarpunch II (White Peak) at 6,102 m (20,020 ft) being most prominent from the hotel’s front porch.

Shri Yamuna Raj Niketuna
Himachali Dharmshala Hotel.

Through interviews and observations, I pieced together a network of socio-economic relationships to develop a diagram that represents the kinship and complexity of the support infrastructure required to maintain the pilgrimage of this place. Thus, Figure 1 presents that three-blood related Yamunotri pujaris own the hotel. Through interviews I gathered that pujaris, especially those of popular dhamas, are powerful community members both in financial wealth and political and economic influence. They each own multiple properties in Janki Chatti and the adjacent village of Kharsali across the Yamuna River. Similarly, Scottish-born author William McKay Aitken wrote in 1997 of “bored priests alongside padlocked collection boxes…” (para. 2) indicating, from his Eurocentric perspective, pujaris collecting money from, “…dutiful queues of resigned pilgrims waiting their turn for a thirty second assembly line obeisance to the substitute deity!” (para. 2) [emphasis his]. Likewise, they have statewide political influence by threatening to shut down access to the Yamuna idol unless they are offered certain concessions, such as building restoration funding from the government (Kotnala, 2018).

Vikash Nautiyal and author
reviewing social network data.

 Twenty-five-year-old Vikash Nautiyal rented out five of the hotel’s 27 rooms and the canteen for his seasonal business, which was renting rooms out to walas and some pilgrims on occasion, as well as boarding mules, and operating the canteen to feed his boarders and other walas. Vikash rented the spaces for ₹120,000 (US$1,512) for six months, May through October. This was his first year with such a rental arrangement at this location. Prior to this he operated a canteen and temporary storefront just outside of Yamunotri for seven years. In addition to rent, he had to purchase all the kitchenware, single-burner gas stove, and other start up supplies of bulk goods, sundries, and tables, plastic window cover material, etc. In all, Vikash indicated he had an initial layout of ₹1 lakh 60,000 (US$2,027), plus the rental cost. Thus, his total start-up cost was ₹280,000 (US$3,548). Vikash’s parents split the initial investment cost with him 50/50, and he expected to break even in the six months in which he had the property rented. He expected next year to profit well from the enterprise since most of the kitchen amenities would already be purchased and he would only have to front the cost of sundries, perishables, and consumable supplies.

Aakash Nautiyal.

In addition to start-up costs and rent, Vikash employed his 20-year-old brother Aakash Nautiyal for the busiest season of May through mid-June to help manage the enterprise. He also employed a full-time cook, 21-year-old Shiwa Nautiyal, his cousin, and he employed a part-time bank runner to make bank deposits and supply bills for change 45 km (28 mi) away, two hours driving, in Barkot. Added to that, Vikash co-owned a mule with his other cousin 23-year-old Keshav Nautiyal, brother of Shiwa. Keshav worked as a ghoda wala in May and the first part of June, however, he had to return home to his village to take part in agricultural work. Atul Rana, 20 years old, was a non-relative hired by one of the owners to manage the remaining hotel rooms on behalf of the owners. He left in mid-June to return to his village.

 

Shiwa Nautiyal.

Vikash, in addition to his work running the enterprise I just outlined, did logistical management work for a road construction company in Dehradun and for another in Barkot. He dedicated most of his day to operating his business, typically from 5:30 to 6:00 am to 9:30 pm each day, with an occasional break to watch yatris pass by. After lunch he would disappear into the storeroom for a nap. He would then work until midnight on his other projects in construction logistics.

Activities at Himachali Dharmshala were evidently orchestrated by one young entrepreneur, Vikash Nautiyal. Certainly, the type of activities that centered around the hotel and canteen go on without him elsewhere along the pilgrimage, but as an illustrative case, one can see that a substantial network of activity is built into the productivity he coordinated. As I noted above, this type of activity, though perhaps not at the same scale, is going on every 24 m (79 ft) up and down the pilgrim’s path in Janki Chatti.

Some of the stock required to operate a canteen.

Ghoda Wala, Doli Wala, and Basket Carriers

In 2011, Aitken wrote of his char dham experience, “On the way I passed my village muleteer coming up with a broad grin on his face. He had made two thousand rupees on this double trip” (para. 1). Two thousand rupees in 2011, had the value of about US$45. Today, as I write this, ₹2,000 is worth only US$25. But that is on an international market which may not matter much in the local economy. And it was on a “double trip,” a single trip likely earning one ₹1,000. On the Yamunotri yatra a ghoda wala earned a gross ₹1,600 (US$20.27) to ₹4,000 (US$50.68) up and back, depending upon the physical size/weight of the passenger and the wala’s ability to negotiate. Not all ghoda walas own the mule they guide. In some cases, they were working with someone else who owned the mule. Non-mule owner muleteers were earning ₹700 (US$8.87) per trip up and back with the balance going to the mule’s owner.

 

Ghoda wala returning from Yamunotri.

While owning and guiding a mule was the least physical of the yatri transportation methods for the individual porter, it was the most expensive enterprise to operate. The overhead cost for a mule involved buying hay at ₹50/day, feed ₹160 daily, rice hulls (feed supplement) ₹100/day, and ₹2,500 per mule boarding over a six-month period (about ₹14/day). Thus, the expense to operate one mule (not accounting for farriers or veterinary services) amounted to about ₹325/day (US$4.12/day) resulting in an estimated daily net earning for an owner of between ₹1,275 to ₹3,675 (US$16.75 to US$46.56). Caveats included a rider not taking the mule back down, effectively cutting the earnings in half, the rider bailing out on the ghoda wala part-way up the mountain then not paying at all (I witnessed two arguments between rider and wala that resulted in the rider just walking away). Of course, there is the upfront cost of purchasing a mule as well, which was about ₹65,000 (US$832). The upside though is that mules have value to individual owners outside of just transporting people, they are used on farms for a variety of work means. Regardless, the profit margin must be substantial enough that thousands of men with mules migrate from regional villages to live with their mules in cold plastic shelters without running water for several months of the year.

A doli wala stands by his doli while his companions hustle
up riders just getting off of tourist busses.

Doli walas, on the other hand, were charging ₹8,000 to ₹16,000 (US$101.36 to US$202.72) per passenger. This, of course, was split four ways although some, but very few, dolis were carried by three men. Dolis were homemade from wood, rope, and wire. Little expense was needed to start up a doli business, however, carrying a full-grown adult passenger up a crowded mountain trail then back down must be extraordinarily difficult. More difficult though was the work of the basket carriers. Always done by a Nepali man, the basket carriers charged ₹3,000 to ₹8,000 (US$38.02 to US$101.38) for the combined up and back trip. One Nepali interviewee, Naula Bista from Khandachakra, Nepal, told me he mostly charged ₹5,000 (US$63.36) for an “up and down” ride. The baskets these men used were handwoven with some type of soft seat material like foam rubber or just folds of cloth.

 

Naula Bista.

Typical thali dinner served each evening in the canteen.

In the Himachali Dharmshala canteen the different walas all knew one another and easily intermingled. Around 8:30 pm, eight to twelve walas would gather at the crude picnic-like tables, chattering amongst themselves and sometimes smoking a shared cigarette. Shiwa, the cook, would serve up dinner on a thali, aluminum tray, each man getting the same meal that might consist of rice, endless chapati bread, spiced carrot slices, dahi (yogurt), some type of cooked vegetable (green beans or okra), and kabuli chana (chickpea soup). Eating with their right hand they would consume the meal, rinse off their thali, and Shiwa or Vikash would open his ledger book and write down their meal cost of ₹160 (US$2.03) each. One of the services Vikash provided was interest-free credit for purchases from his canteen. At the end of the week, or when a wala had sufficient funds, he would pay off his debt. In May he extended credit to around 25 walas, but by mid-June he was offering credit to only 12 or so men as they left with the diminishing season. (This shrinking number is symbolized in Figure 1 below the two different walas as numbers with dotted borders around them.)

Credit book with handwritten notes below each man's name.

 In addition to eating together, many of the walas stayed together in one of the hotel rooms. Vikash charged each man ₹200/night (US$2.53) for a shared room; six to seven men per room. They slept on thick mats on the floor. So, the apparent daily fixed cost at Himachali Dharmshala per man amounted to ₹360 (US$4.56). Certainly, these men had other costs for other meals, but they usually did not take them at the canteen as they would be out on the trail working during the day.

Figure 1. Socio-economic network of place. Click to enlarge.

Discussion

It was clear that countless small- and mid-scale socio-economic activities were going on behind the obvious scene of weary passengers exiting tourist busses, haggling walas vying for passengers, and throngs of yatris moving up the pathway to Yamunotri. This complex service infrastructure outlined above and in Figure 1, was shaping, conducting, and controlling this thirthayatra. Scores of these relationship systems were transpiring in interconnection along the yatra path in Janki Chatti, making for a robust economy required to make this sacred place work for the yatris.

Collins-Kreiner (2010) alluded to the point that geographers, of which I consider myself, tend to concentrate on “spatial elements such as location and movement, in researching pilgrimage, but it is now evident that their writing does not and should not ignore other social, economic, and cultural aspects” of such pilgrimages (p. 162).

Included in these aspects is the notion of external power. Unlike a Catholic pilgrimage, for example to Vatican City that is controlled and closely governed by the Holy See, there appeared to be little, if any, external power directing the thirthayatra to Yamunotri. There was no central religious body organizing it.

This is particularly the case for those religions in which there are no formal or institutional centers of power, but rather diffuse power structures invested in smaller-scale religious practitioners, such as what occurs in many indigenous belief systems. Most Eastern religions, particularly in the great pilgrimages of Hinduism, also adhere to this; there is no one center of authority, no single religious hierarchy. (Di Giovine, & Choe, 2019, authorization process, para. 2)

Nor was there any centralized governmental entity controlling anything observable. No restaurant or hotel inspections, no solid waste or animal waste pick up, and only a limited presence of police lounging in the shade looking at their phones. A structure was in place for registering online as a yatri, the result being a QR code generated for each person from which their personal and contact information could be accessed by authorities should a catastrophic event of some sort occur. However, while there was a QR code check point/on-site registration point, it was either without personnel or the people operating it were doing nothing but sitting and looking at their phones. Moreover, had the check point been in operation there would have been a logjam of pilgrims given that thousands of people per hour were travelling up the trail by various means.

 

Trail condition in Janki Chatti staging area.

Turner referred to pilgrimages such as this as places of “anti-structure” (1974a as cited in Di Giovine, & Choe, 2019). It was also run by 20-somethings, as supported by Dhyani, Gairola, and Dimri (2020) who presented that over 51% of the dhaba keepers (as they referred to the restaurants) along the route were between 21 and 30 years old.

On a global scale Yadav (citing Ganti, 2014, p. 91) characterized modern pilgrimages through a neoliberal lens, characterizing them as having “a mode of governance that embraces the idea of the self-regulating free market, with its associated values of competition and self-interest, as the model for effective and efficient government” (2019, p. 2). This appeared to be the case on the Yamunotri yatra.

However, self-regulating governance, or anti-structure, can lead to poor, if any, infrastructure, which has been the subject of some other pilgrimage studies. In 1866, there were cholera outbreaks in Hijaz, the western region of what is now the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that contains Mecca and Medina. Nevertheless, those outbreaks led to water-related studies and considerations on how to manage human waste (Low, 2015). From a different perspective, Lin et al. (2020) noted that related to the socio-economics of Taiwan’s Da Jia Matsu pilgrimage that the pilgrimage itself can lead to “price volatility, increased land prices and expenditures” and “inappropriate fund planning” (p. 2) along with a higher tax burden. However, they noted that their pilgrimage of study also led to an “improved economy, added public infrastructure, enhanced transportation, increased consumption opportunities, improved basic environments, increased taxes, improved public services, and have benefits that outweigh impacts, thus, attracting public investment, creating employment opportunities, increasing tourist revenues, and stimulating the economy” (Lin et al, 2020, p. 2). Taha (2019) focused on the commodification of the Hajj in Mecca, but primarily on large-scale hotels and tourist packages and how those were perceived by locals as leading to a loss of Muslim heritage. In Janki Chatti on the Yamunotri trail there appeared to be an improved economy for regional hoteliers, restaurant owners, bus drivers, and tour operators on a macro scale, but in support of Hindu culture—at least the religio-spiritual part for which yatris were there. Likewise, an improved economy was true for the personal economics of the men from regional villages who transported people up the trail and back and who benefitted from the room and board arrangements with local entrepreneurs such as Vikash Nautiyal. Price volatility and higher taxes, on sales of good or services at least, were not apparent. In fact, in the informal economy that was present along the route no taxes on sales were being charged for anything, possibly to the detriment of the State. However, this was my experience throughout India. For example, my hotel accommodation in Barkot, on the way to Janki Chatti was about 12% less expensive because I did not need a receipt, that is, the cash transaction went unrecorded.  

Entrepreneur-Level Authority and Worker Relationships

What I found missing in the literature surrounding pilgrimages was any consideration of the network of relationships of laborers. In this case, the laborers transporting people up and back from Yamunotri. This thirthayatra, or journey to the place of the divine, is unique as pilgrimages go given that men transport people. This is not the case on all pilgrimages on the chotta char dham.

Atul Rana.

What is not evident in the socio-economic network (Figure 1) is the personal relationship between Vikash Nautiyal, the central stakeholder in the network, and his employees and the walas. When I arrived Vikash Nautiyal was not present, he was out of town. His brother, Aakash Nautiyal was left in charge of the hotel and canteen. Atul Rana, who worked for one of the pujari hotel owners, not Vikash or Aakash, seemed to be eager to take charge of me and he showed me my room, quoted me a price, and handed over the key to the room. However, it quickly became evident that Aakash was in a position of authority as he was the one who took my payment with Atul nowhere to be found. In the US, where I am from, and in larger hotel chains in New Delhi, one does not pay for a room until check out. Atul was asking for payment up front and I initially refused, explaining I would pay when I checked out. Keep in mind there is no reception desk or formal check in, and no paperwork or copying of my passport information. The entire process was very informal. One simply shows up and talks to whoever is at the canteen behind the counter. Atul had to go speak with Aakash about what was likely an odd request (to pay later). Aakash called his brother Vikash to inquire as to what to do. Vikash told Aakash to collect half of the payment up front and I paid half as requested. This entire exchange only took a few minutes while I was unpacking but demonstrated that Vikash held the decision-making authority.

In addition, I observed that neither Aakash nor Vikash ever sat with Atul Rana or Shiwa Nautiyal (cousin of Aakash and Vikash) in the canteen. When Aakash was left in charge he would often be behind the canteen’s counter helping with preparations or sitting on a stool next to the till. When Vikash arrived, he took that physical position in the canteen and his brother moved out from behind the counter. About half-way through my stay Aakash returned to his village by horseback and thus was not present the entire period of my stay. In contrast to his business operator cousins, Shiwa would sit next to Atul on a platform that was used for sleeping at night and for sitting during the day. If Aakash or Vikash happened to not be in the canteen Shiwa was left in charge. On several occasions when Shiwa was left alone and I tried to pay for my meal he would not take my money. Rather he would ask me to pay later when Aakash or Vikash were available. Apparently, he did not handle cash. However, he would write down credit charges for the walas in a notebook. Each wala’s name was on a separate page of the notebook with their meal and sundry charges below their name.

Shiwa, a doli wala, and a basket wala sharing a cigarette in the back of the canteen. 
This is also where Shiwa slept each night.

In relation to the wala customers, they often sat with Shiwa on the platform in the back of the canteen as equals, sometimes beneath blankets, sometimes beside a fire that was going near the end of the platform (it had a sort of chimney-less fire pit built in). Sometimes they would be smoking a common cigarette, other times just talking. However, Vikash and Aakash would rarely sit with the customer men. They would sit behind the counter instead. On the occasion they did sit with the walas it was to huddle around the warmth of the fire. I never observed Aakash or Vikash eating with the walas. In fact, I never observed them sitting down to eat at all. They were busy doing something else most of the time, serving food, rinsing dishes, or selling items from behind the counter.

From these observations I can conclude that Vikash was clearly in a position of authority despite the employees being his brother, cousin, and one non-relative. Vikash lead the small group with a distinctive easiness and never overtly directed anyone to complete a task. While Atul had left for the summer when Vikash arrived and I did not observe any interactions between them, Vikash directed his brother and cousin with a gentle tone and sometimes just a nod or gesture indicating to me that they worked well together and Vikash wielded his authority with ease. 

Conclusion

In this case study I have outlined the socio-economic network of one hotel and canteen that served personal transportation workers along the thirthayatra to Yamunotri dhama in Uttarakhand, India. I found no other published participant observation-based study at the level of the individual entrepreneur, especially one that catered to support workers rather than the pilgrims, or yatris, themselves.

As Taha (2019) noted, “pilgrimage economics is a complex subject” (p. 24) and “spiritual pilgrimages have always incorporated a financial or business element” (p. 7). This study reveals some aspects found in the micro-level socio-economic associations that are required in an anti-structural, mass pilgrimage event—especially those of moving thousands of people along an arduous route. Researchers in future yatra seasons might embed themselves with particular walas themselves to explore how they come to the work they do on site, especially those who temporarily migrate from Nepal. Zooming out to a broader scale, one could investigate tourist bus operations, other canteen operations—especially those few run by women, socio-economic impacts on the ancient neighboring village of Kharsali, and the relationship between the land- and business-owning pujaris and the operation of the thirthayatra. Finally, a longitudinal look at the support structures of this event would be interesting to see what changes occur over time.

 

Tourist helicopter flying wealthy

Yamunotri pilgrims in from Dehradun airport. 

 

Note on Exchange Rates

The exchange rate at the time of writing was fluctuating around:

1 INR = 0.0127 USD; 1 USD = 78.92 INR
1 INR =0.0122 EUR; 1 EUR = 82.1088 INR

Source: https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/
June 30, 2022

This project was supported with a generous fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.  

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