Place · national park & yatra landscape · Pakistan
Hingol National Park
Pakistan's largest national park, some six thousand square kilometres of the Makran coastal range where the Hingol river cuts to the sea. It holds the Sindh ibex, chinkara and the largest Baloch wild sheep population, and it also holds a pilgrimage: the shrine of Hinglāj Mātā lies inside it, and the yātrā from Karachi passes the mud volcano of Chandragup, where pilgrims make offerings to the crater before going on to the cave. Wind-cut formations along the coast road have been named the Princess of Hope and the Balochistan Sphinx.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 25.600, 65.667 (approximate)
Worth knowing
Chandragup is an active mud volcano that pilgrims climb to throw coconuts into, so one of Pakistan's largest Hindu pilgrimages has a geological formation as a compulsory station on the route.
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyHinglāj Mātā
The shrine is inside the park. Hingol covers some six thousand square kilometres of the Makran coastal range, Pakistan's largest protected area, and the cave of Hinglāj Mātā lies within it on the Hingol river — which means the country's largest Hindu pilgrimage runs through a national park and past a working mud volcano, Chandragup, where pilgrims stop to make offerings into the crater before going on to the cave. Ibex and chinkara and the yātrā share the same road in.
- AnalogueGirnār
Two arid landscapes where a Hindu pilgrimage and a last wildlife refuge occupy the same ground. Girnār in Saurashtra carries Jain and Hindu shrines up its slopes and sits beside the Gir forest, the only place Asiatic lions survive. Hingol in Makran holds the cave of Hinglāj Mātā, the largest Hindu pilgrimage in Pakistan, inside the country's largest national park and the stronghold of Sindh ibex and Baloch wild sheep. In both cases the pilgrimage route and the protected area were drawn around each other.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Hingol National Park” and “Chandragup”. Balochistan Forest and Wildlife Department records; Geological Survey of Pakistan on the Makran mud volcanoes.
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