Bad weather hampers Amarnath yatra

The annual Amarnath Yatra, which began on June 30, was suspended on Tuesday due to bad weather and mudslides on the way to the pilgrimage route.

The 43-day pilgrimage is held from the twin base camps - Nunwan in Pahalgam of south Kashmir’s Anantnag and Baltal camp in central Kashmir's Ganderbal district.

Around 3,000 pilgrims were stopped at the Nunwan base camp on the Pahalgam axis on Tuesday morning, officials said. Another batch of around 4,000 pilgrims that left Jammu for the Pahalgam route were stopped at Yatri Niwas in Chanderkote in the Ramban district.

Similarly, pilgrims on the Baltal route were stopped after mudslides near the Gund area on Srinagar-Leh national highway, reports said. The highway got completely blocked due to the mudslides. Authorities have pressed men and machinery to restore the highway immediately.

The Meteorological (MeT) department has predicted light to moderate rain in Jammu and Kashmir during the next 24 hours.

In the first five days of the pilgrimage more than 72,000 pilgrims are reported to have offered their prayers at the 3,880-metre-high cave shrine of Lord Shiva in the upper reaches of the south Himalayas.

This year the pilgrimage is expected to see higher than usual attendance of pilgrims as it is resuming after a gap of three years. The annual yatra was canceled in 2020 as well as 2021 due to Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019 it was cut short following intelligence inputs of terror threats ahead of the Centre scrapping Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.

The yatra to the holy cave shrine will culminate, as per the tradition, on the day of Raksha Bandhan, on August 11.