The Legend and Pilgrimage of Yamunotri

According to Hindu tradition, the goddess Yamuna is the daughter of the sun god Surya and the twin sister of Yama, the god of death, and bathing in her waters is said to spare a soul the pain that awaits those who die without ever having done so, a promise that echoes the Ganges' own association with liberation from rebirth. The temple's shrine houses a black marble image of the goddess, and legend holds that the sage Asit Muni once lived on the riverbank here in constant devotion to her, keeping a hermitage that pilgrims still associate with the site. The temple itself is reached on foot from Janki Chatti, a steep climb of several kilometres along the Bhagirathi valley, and pilgrims commonly stop at the nearby hot spring, Surya Kund, where the water is hot enough to cook rice and potatoes wrapped in cloth, offered afterward at the shrine as prasad. Because winter snow closes the high valley for months at a time, the temple opens only from spring into autumn, and its opening each year is treated as the ceremonial start of the wider Char Dham pilgrimage season, drawing an early wave of pilgrims who then continue on to Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. Earthquakes and avalanches have damaged the structure more than once since Raja Sudarshan Shah built it in 1839, and the temple standing today reflects several later repairs rather than a single unbroken original.