Sanatana Kshetras🔍 Search

← All temples

Kedarnath Temple

Kedarnath, Uttarakhand, India

VerifiedOral tradition / legend
Deities
Kedarnath (Shiva)
Traditions
shaiva
Worship status
active
Address
Kedarnath, near the source of the Mandakini river, Rudraprayag district, Uttarakhand, India
Coordinates
30.7346, 79.0669
Darshan hours
Varies by temple and season; consult the temple's own trust/devasthanam for the current daily schedule before visiting.
Best time to visit
May to June and September to October; the temple is closed roughly November to April due to snow (Uttarakhand Char Dham season).
How to reach
Reachable only by a roughly 16-18 km trek (or helicopter service) from Gaurikund, itself several hours by road from Rishikesh/Haridwar.
Festivals
Akshaya Tritiya (opening day) (April/May), Bhai Dooj (closing day) (October/November)

Location

Open in Google Maps

One of the twelve Jyotirlingas, Kedarnath is also one of the Char Dham and Panch Kedar shrines, set high in the Garhwal Himalayas near the Mandakini river’s source. Tradition associates its founding with the Pandavas seeking Shiva’s forgiveness after the Kurukshetra war, and with a later restoration by Adi Shankaracharya, who is traditionally said (in one of several conflicting hagiographic accounts) to have attained samadhi near the temple. It is not certain who built the original temple or precisely when; the earliest known textual reference to the site appears in the Skanda Purana (c. 7th-8th century CE), and Kedarnath was firmly established as a pilgrimage center by the 12th century.

Sources

  • oral tradition: Pandava-founding and Adi Shankaracharya samadhi traditions, widely recorded in Char Dham pilgrimage literature.
  • historical record: Cross-checked against Wikipedia's account of Kedarnath Temple during verification pass: confirms that it is not certain who built the original temple or when; the earliest documented textual reference to the site is in the Skanda Purana (c. 7th-8th century CE), and Kedarnath was firmly established as a pilgrimage center by the 12th century (per texts such as the Kritya-kalpataru).

For review

  • The temple is seasonally closed; the founding legend (Pandavas, Adi Shankaracharya) is oral/hagiographic tradition, not independently documented history - and that uncertainty is itself the confirmed historical consensus (Wikipedia's own account states it is not certain who built the original temple or when), not a gap in this project's verification.
  • Hagiographies disagree on where Adi Shankaracharya attained samadhi: some traditions place it at Kedarnath (as stated here), others at Kanchipuram; this entry follows the Kedarnath tradition without asserting it is the only account.