Meditation cave to be built near famous Jageshwar temple in Kumaon

A meditation cave will be built near the ancient Jageshwar temple in Almora, Uttarakhand on the lines of the cave at the Kedarnath shrine area where Prime Minister Narendra Modi meditated in May 2019, officials said.

The tourism department has been asked to identify the land for the proposed cave.

“A meditation cave on the lines of Kedarnath shrine will be built near Jageshwar temple. The district magistrate and ex-officio president of the management committee have asked the district tourism officer to identify the land for the proposed cave,” said Hemant Bhatt, chief priest of Jageshwar temple in Almora.

Jageshwar temple is an ancient temple complex around 35 km from Almora district headquarters. It is a group of 124 temples dated between the seventh to fourteen centuries.

Pilgrims visit here round the year to offer prayer to Lord Shiva.

District magistrate Vandana Singh visited the temple on Thursday and took the meeting of the management committee and the priests. She said to highlight and attract pilgrims across the country, new features must be added around the temple area. She stressed a meditation cave should be constructed so that pilgrims could find a suitable place for meditation.

She asked the district tourism officer to identify the suitable land and send a proposal to the government for the proposed meditation cave. Apart from this, signage will be put along the way leading to the temple, depicting the historical and religious importance of the ancient temple. The signage will depict the tourist places around the temple and in Almora district.

Bhatt said, “She emphasised preparing ‘Prasad’ and items for prayer at the local level for offering at the temple. She instructed CCTV cameras to be in operation round the clock and use of an alcohol-meter to check the entry of alcoholics and anti-social elements.”

Prime minister Narendra Modi visited the Rudra meditation cave in Kedarnath in May 2019. He spent a day meditating at the cave, which is nearly a kilometre from the Kedarnath shrine. Following Modi’s visit, the cave received a significant number of bookings from across the country for meditation.

Following this, the state government constructed three meditation caves in the Kedarnath area.

Last month, the state tourism development board also decided to start cave tourism to attract tourists towards the newly explored caves in the hill district of Pithoragarh to diversify the tourism sector which is based majorly on religious tourism and hill stations. The development has come after the exploration of at least nine new caves situated near the Patal Bhuvaneshwar caves in Pithoragarh by the scientists of Uttarakhand Space Application Centre (USAC).