Jammu, Jul 2: The fourth group of 6,113 pilgrims, including 1,292 women, departed from the Bhagwati Nagar base camp in Jammu on Saturday to make their way to the 3,880-meter-high sacred cave shrine of Amarnath in the south Kashmir Himalayas, according to officials. Tight security measures were in place, they added.
The pilgrims will arrive at the twin base camps of Pahalgam in the Anantnag district and Baltal in the Ganderbal district later in the day, along with 195 Sadhus and 25 children.
Since the 43-day yatra began on June 30 from the twin routes—the traditional 48-km Nunwan-Pahalgam in south Kashmir’s Anantnag and the 14-km shorter Baltal in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal—more than 20,000 pilgrims have offered their prayers at the cave shrine, which is abode to the naturally formed ice-shivlingam.
With this, 23,214 yatris have departed the Bhagwati Nagar base camp for the Valley since Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha waved off the first group of pilgrims on June 29.
The yatra is expected to come to an end on August 11 in honour of “Shravan Purnima,” which falls on the same day as Raksha Bandhan.