Place · high-altitude gurdwara · India
Hemkunt Sāhib
The glacial-lake gurdwara at 4,633m in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, identified in the 20th century by Sant Sohan Singh with a lake described in Guru Gobind Singh's autobiographical Bachitra Natak as the site of his previous life's tapasya before his incarnation. The identification was ratified in the 1930s by Sikh scholars and the first gurdwara was built in 1960; the lake sits ringed by seven snow peaks, consistent with the Bachitra Natak's description. Pilgrims reach it from Govindghat on the Alaknanda road via Ghangaria, the same stretch that leads to Badrinath — a Sikh pilgrimage threaded onto a Hindu Char Dham axis.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Sikh tradition; Dasam Granth interpretation
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 30.705, 79.610
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyBadrīnāth
Hemkunt Sahib sits at 4,600 metres above a glacial lake and is reached from Govindghat, on the same Alaknanda road that carries pilgrims to Badrinath — so a Sikh pilgrimage identified only in the twentieth century and a Vaishnava one of at least a thousand years now share one valley, one road and one bus service. Both close with the snow and open in May, and the Garhwali villages along the route work for both seasons without distinguishing between them.
- Scriptural inclusion inGāgron Fort
Pipa, a Rajput ruler of Gagron in Rajasthan, gave up his throne to become a disciple of Ramanand, and one of his compositions is in the Guru Granth Sahib. The Sikh scripture therefore includes a renunciant king alongside a weaver, a leather-worker, a butcher and a Chishti shaikh — the bhagat bani was assembled on the criterion of what the compilers judged true, not of who had said it.
Sources
Gurdwara Sri Hemkunt Sahib
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