Kedarnath's temple is only open to the public for half the year, and even then its priesthood comes from the opposite end of the country from where it stands.
Why Shiva is a hump here
Temple legend holds that the Pandava brothers, seeking Shiva's forgiveness after the Kurukshetra war, pursued him to the Himalayas, where he evaded them by taking the form of a bull and diving underground, leaving behind a hump-shaped rock that the temple enshrines as its lingam, one of the twelve jyotirlingas. The story gives the temple's unusual, irregular natural rock form a specific narrative explanation rather than treating it as an ordinary carved image.
Closed by snow, not by choice
Kedarnath sits at high altitude and is accessible only for roughly six months of the year; during the winter closure the deity's ceremonial image is moved down to Ukhimath, where worship continues at a substitute site until the mountain temple reopens each spring, a seasonal migration built directly into the temple's operating calendar.
Priests from Karnataka
Unlike most north Indian temples staffed by local Brahmin lineages, Kedarnath's chief priests, called Rawals, traditionally come from a Veerashaiva Lingayat lineage based in Karnataka, in the far south of India, a geographic mismatch maintained by tradition since at least the era of the philosopher Adi Shankara, who is credited with reviving worship at the site.