Surkanda Devi

Surkanda is one of three Devi seats that the Garhwal ridges hold in a single reverence: Kunjapuri above Rishikesh, Chandrabadani across the Tehri hills, and Surkanda highest of the three. Pilgrims who take all three in one journey speak of a darshan of the Mother entire, and Surkanda, the crown of that circuit, draws the largest crowds.

Its own great day is Ganga Dussehra, the tenth of the bright fortnight of Jyeshtha, when the Ganga is remembered as descending to the earth. A spring rises on this otherwise waterless summit, and the hills honour its water as Ganga-jal itself; the Devi is bathed with it and a fair fills the ridge. Navratri in both its seasons and the full-moon days bring their own ascents, and through the rest of the year the shrine keeps the quiet of a high place.

And there is the view, remembered alongside the darshan. On a clear morning the summit opens a long northern horizon of snow — Bandarpunch, Swargarohini and Chaukhamba standing out among the ranges — with the Doon hazy to the south. This is Devbhoomi, the land of Kedarnath and Badrinath, and Surkanda keeps watch over its western approaches.

Surkanda Devi crowns a bare summit in the western part of Tehri tehsil, some 2,750 metres up — 2,756 metres, a little over nine thousand feet, by the measure most often quoted. The hill, known locally as Sirkut, rises straight off the Mussoorie–Chamba road between the hill stations of Dhanaulti and Kanatal, and the last village the road reaches is Kaddukhal. Oak, deodar and rhododendron crowd the slopes; cloud sits on the ridge for much of the year and snow lies on it through winter.

The shrine belongs to the great story of Sati — the daughter of Daksha who gave up her life at her father's sacrifice, and whose body the grieving Shiva bore across the world until Vishnu's discus released it. Wherever a part of the Mother came to earth a Peetha arose, and Garhwal holds that here it was her head, her sir, that came to rest. From that the hill and its Devi take their name: Sirkhanda, the older form the district administration still records, worn in ordinary speech to Surkanda. The lists of the Peethas differ from text to text and region to region, and the hills have never troubled themselves with rank — across Garhwal this is simply the Siddhapeeth of Surkanda, and the head is honoured as the seat of consciousness itself.

How old the worship is, no one can say; regional accounts place this summit's Devi in the Kedarkhand, the Garhwal book of the Skanda Purana. The temple itself is a modest thing of dressed stone, repaired and renewed many times against a climate that gives it no quarter, and served by priests from the villages at the foot of the hill.

The temple is small and built for the weather: dressed local stone, a low conical shikhara topped by a trishul, a plain garbhagriha for the Devi, and garlands of bells left by generations of devotees. There is little carved ornament, and none is missed.

What gives the place its grandeur is its perch. The summit is barely wide enough for the shrine and the paved court around it, and on every side the ground falls away into forest and cloud.