'You cannot do that…': Influencer's angry post for Kainchi Dham visitors

By now, everyone has seen the scenes from Kainchi Dham over the long weekend. Videos of the packed pilgrimage site, bumper-to-bumper traffic and people stuck for hours have flooded social media, with reports even suggesting that ambulances and elderly visitors were caught in the chaos.

The sudden rush at the Uttarakhand ashram associated with Neem Karoli Baba comes amid the massive success of Hanuman Ansh, which appears to have taken Kainchi Dham's popularity to another level.

And now, a content creator who grew up around Kainchi Dham has emerged as a strong voice on what the sudden influx of visitors is doing to the place. In a long, angry post on Instagram, Aishwarya Kandpal, popular as @indianskinblog, urged tourists to be more mindful and to not litter and film inside the ashram.

"Most of you probably know it as Kainchi Dham," she wrote, adding that the name gained significantly more attention from the media and the internet after 2020 and even more following the recent film.

"For us locals though, it’s always been the quiet, nondescript, Kainchi," she wrote.

According to her, the temple's daily footfall averaged around 50 people until the late 2010s. She described it as a place where people came to pray, rather than a destination dominated by cameras, vloggers and social media content. View this post on Instagram A post shared by aishwarya kandpal skincare & haircare (@indianskinblog)She added that her parents have been associated with the ashram for years and have spent considerable time there following their retirement, helping with its day-to-day activities and management. The growing crowds, she said, have now made even routine visits difficult.

"The roads are jammed beyond capacity," she wrote, adding that locals have to leave home as early as 5 am for what would otherwise be a 40-minute journey.

Then she called out tourists for honking, and also leaving behind cigarette buds, plastic bottle and wrappers.

“The constant honking leaves birds and animals disturbed. The sides of the roads are lined with plastic bottles, wrappers, cigarette butts—you name it! The whole area suddenly has a sea of new shops selling religious artifacts and the flood of people doesn’t seem to end. Everyone’s scrambling, everyone’s in a rush. There’s pollution, extreme congestion, endless selfies and endless litter.”

“And then you enter the ashram and see people doing exactly what they’ve been asked to not do: Phones out, cameras rolling, people filming themselves inside the premises and vlogging loudly on mics! You cannot do that,” she added.

She stressed that filming inside the ashram goes against its long-standing rules and the spirit of the place.

“The simplicity was a choice. Precisely why the whole culture of coming here, filming everything, putting it online, turning every visit into content feels so completely at odds with the place,” Kandpal wrote.

She, however, clarified that she wasn’t asking devotees to stop visiting Kainchi Dham at all. But she put forth some suggestion: keeping phones on silent and leaving them in bags, travelling in groups instead of taking multiple cars, minimising honking and carrying plastic waste back with them.

Her larger request was simple: visitors should remember why they came.

"I ever so simply want you to experience the Kainchi I grew up around - quiet, nondescript, no frills and miles away from the prying eyes of the media and the internet," she wrote.- Ends