rushing into the ice-cold waters of the lake; others, as if transfigured, stand fixed and dumb, seemingly overcome with religious fervour, while some, repeatedly leaping in the air, give vent to their joy in delirious shouts. And in one form or another these fanatical performances are enacted at certain dates or seasons in every year at one or other of the various Hindu shrines which lie concealed in the ice-bound fastnesses of the Himalayas, whether around the great pillar of ice at Amarnath in Kashmir, the fountain of fire at Jawala-mukhi (flame mouth) in Kangra, or the sacred lake of Gosainthan in Nepal; and Gosainthan is the cruellest penance of them all. Those who return, ever after live in a religious plane placed high above their associates, and the glamour of their pilgrimage brightens their narrow lives as they have never known before. But there are also the others, those absent ones whose bones lie under the snows, beneath the rocks, among the boulders, or amid the ice of the long and tortuous path to Gosainthan, and one wonders if those are not more blessed than all.
