Name : Sri Pada ( Footprint of God)
Location: Sri Lanka
Importance : Sri Pada is the only mountain in the world sacred to four major religious groups. Oddly enough, it also happens to be nestled in Sri Lanka, a country ravaged by civil war for the past 20-plus years.
Description : Sri Pada is a modest, cone-shaped peak on an island in the Indian Ocean. At the top of the mountain, you’ll find a 1,600-square-foot platform on which there’s a depression the shape of a human foot—a very large foot, about 1 yard wide and nearly 2 yards long. (See how carefully we avoided measuring the foot in “feet?”)
Buddhists believe the footprint to be Buddha’s.
Hindus celebrate it as Footprint of Shiva.
Christians claim St. Thomas left it there before he ascended into heaven.
Muslims believe Adam made it after he descended from heaven (hence the mountain’s nickname, Adam’s Peak).
The Mountain is second highest in SriLanka. Hundreds of thousands of travelers of all religious stripes make the pilgrimage up the mountain each year. The climb up Sri Pada, which can take three to four hours, is marked by crumbling steps (around 5000), hundreds of colorful butterflies, lots of leeches in the surrounding forests, and tea houses for breaks along the way. In some places, there are iron chains to help out climbers who wish to pull themselves up.
It’s said that Alexander the Great left them behind when he visited the site in 324 BCE. There’s no record regarding who Alexander believed created the footprint, but if we had to take a guess, we think he probably told people that it was his own.
On a full moon day (a Buddhist holy day called “poya”) the climb would take us 6 hours with all of crowd people mulling about. It is beautifull to catch the view of Sunrise from the top of this mountain.
Website : http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/10620
http://www.toddswanderings.com/2008/06/where-butterflies-go-to-die.html
No comments:
Post a Comment