Kedarnath Temple
— — a stone shrine the mountain agreed to keep.
Not only on a wall.
“A Shiva temple at 3,583 metres in the upper Mandakini valley, reached on foot from Gaurikund along a track of about sixteen kilometres. One of the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines and the highest. The doors open with the warming of the passes in late April or early May and close at Diwali, when the deity is carried down to Ukhimath for the winter. Snow holds the peaks behind the temple for most of the year.
Kedarnath Temple, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Kedarnath sits at 3,583 metres in the Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand, in the upper Mandakini valley of the Garhwal Himalayas. The temple is the highest of the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva and one of the four sites of the Chota Char Dham pilgrimage circuit. The traditional approach is a sixteen-kilometre walk from Gaurikund, though helicopter services from Phata, Sersi, and Guptkashi run in season. Behind the temple rises Kedarnath Peak at 6,940 metres, and the Chorabari Glacier feeds the Mandakini just upstream.
The temple is built of large grey stone blocks fitted without mortar, an interlocking technique that has held the structure together for centuries. Tradition attributes the original temple to the Pandava brothers and the present form to Adi Shankara in the eighth century. In June 2013, catastrophic flooding from a glacial-lake outburst above Kedarnath destroyed much of the town below, yet the temple itself stood. A large boulder, called Bhim Shila, lodged behind the rear wall and split the floodwaters around the shrine.
The temple opens to pilgrims on Akshaya Tritiya in late April or early May, when the passes thaw enough for the murti to be carried up from Ukhimath. The Char Dham yatra runs through the monsoon and into autumn. Doors close on Bhai Dooj just after Diwali, usually late October or mid-November. Through the winter, worship of the deity continues at Ukhimath at about 1,300 metres. The high pasture above the temple, called Vasuki Tal, is reachable only in the open months.