Wiki Treks Parasnath Hill/Report

Report

In November 2023, I decided to join a group of pilgrims visiting various Jain religious sites in Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states of India. Along with pilgrimage, it was an opportunity to capture those sites and upload their images on Wikimedia Commons. The most important of the sites was Shikharji which was covered on Wikimedia Commons a decade ago under Wikipedia Treks Sammed Sikhar and not been systematically captured since. I was most interested to capture it.

Preparation

I had attended WikiConference India (WCI) in May 2023. I have participated in many photography campaigns but had never tried to organise one. At WCI, I met the founders of Project Korikath from Bangladesh who are doing great work in documenting the city with photography. I kept in touch with them and with inspiration from them I started Project Parasnath Hill with the aim of improving coverage of Parasnath Hill in Wikimedia projects. I was mentored and helped by leadership of Project Korikath in establishing the project. We had a video call in which they gave me ideas about how to organise the project. They supported me by answering my queries and encouraging me on Telegram. Under Phase I: Wiki Trek Parasnath Hill of the project, I organised this photography expedition. I prepared map, directions and trek on OpenStreetMap to plan the expedition. I prepared list of sites to be covered on the hill and at the foothill.

I contacted the organisers of the pilgrimage and send the word out to participate in the project by their messenger group. There was a lukewarm response and five participants showed interest in the expedition.

• Invite editors to join Done
• Encourage new people from outside the wikicommunity to join Done
• Prepare map of trek and temples on the Parasnath Hill on OpenStreetMap Done Check Map here.

Travel

Pre-event

We, along with group of pilgrims (including participants), started our train journey from Gujarat on 9 December and reached destination after journey of 36 hours. The journey was in heavy winter of northern India. During our train journey, we captured some railway stations on camera which are uploaded under commons:Category:Wiki Treks Parasnath Hill (pre-event).

Event

As we reached Parasnath railway station on 11 December 2023 morning, we had breakfast and then we travelled to Rujuvalika temple group by bus which is some kilometres away from the station. We captured images of the temples and river there. Then we reached Madhuban, which is at foothill of Parasnath hill, via taxi where our stay was planned in the resthouse. We had lunch there and we captured some images of the local market nearby. We had some discussion regarding the event in noon. We had an early dinner and we slept in our rooms early.

As planned we all started our journey on our own to Shikharji/Parasnath Hill between 2am to 2:30am on 12 December 2023 as going in a group was not feasible. It was heavy cold as the trek was tough and long. We started with trek with torch as it was dark night. I was with one participant. It was very difficult trekking as we had to rest multiple times along the way for few minutes each. I was sweating like hell in the cold winter night. As it was dark, taking images were not possible till daybreak around 5:30. we captured few images of daybreak and after journey of another hour, we reached the first tonk of Gautamswami around 6am. As planned we took left turn toward east, and the next set of tonks were visited and captured one after another. As it was a very crowded day, it was bit difficult to capture images as it was not good to disturb pilgrim performing rituals. As each tonk is a shrine with religious footprints which is venerated, we captured exterior of the shrine and the footprints in each. Each tonk is dedicated to certain Jain Tirthankara (god). As we moved eastward, we climbed two hilltops to visit tonk on each one. After one hour of trekking we reached the eastern most/high hilltop tonk of Chandraprabhu which was the most difficult to reach. The view from that tonk captured the hill range. From there we returned until a bifurgate route took us towards south. We climbed two more hilltops to visit few more tonks. Then we went towards southmost tonk of Abhinandanswami on the hilltop. After that, we returned and climbed down to Jalmandir which is a lower most place on the hill. We reached there around 9am. After resting for half hour, we had a breakfast and bath there. We engaged in some rituals there but photography was not allowed there. So we spent about 2 hours at Jalmandir so we left from there at about 11am.

Next, we climbed about hundred steps to reach back to the first tonk of Gautamswami. From there we went towards west, the next set of tonks are located there. After capturing images of these tonks and footprints, we moved further west. We captured two more sets of tonks on hilltops. At last we reached the westernmost and the highest tonk on hill, the Parasnath/Parshwanath Tonk by climbing about hundred steps. It is fairly large tonk with temple and basement shrine. We captured images and participated in rituals too. From there we climbed down about hundred steps and took some rest. We had snacks and tea/coffee. It was about 1pm when we started climbing down from there.

The climbing down as difficult as it was too sloppy and without steps for the most part. The people were few and it was a dense forest. After spending about an hour, we joined back to our climb up way. We captured few images along the way but could not spend much time as we it was required to end journey before sunset. We took rest and few images at Gandharv Nala where we also had tea. We continued to climb down and captured images of places which we could not while climbing up in dark. After 3 hour descent, we reached to foothill around 4pm. The sunset was at 5pm. We had a dinner at resthouse and slept as it was a long tiring day.

Next day, 13 December 2023, we wake up date and after getting ready and breakfast, we visited few local temples at the foothill and took their images. In noon, we visited Jain Museum. We took few images of market along the way. We left Madhuban in taxi in evening and went back to Parasntah railway station.

All images of the this event is uploaded under commons:Category:Wiki Treks Parasnath Hill

Post-event

As the pilgrimage continued further, we continued to take images of the next places on the pilgrimage. We visited Lachchhwad, Kshatriyakund, Pawapuri, Ruins of Nalanda University (World Heritage Site), Rajgiri and Banaras.

We travelled back from Banaras to Gujarat from 17 December night to 19th December 2023 morning. We captured few railway stations on the journey back home. All these images are uploaded undercommons:Category:Wiki Treks Parasnath Hill (post-event).

What could have done better?

I think planning early would have better. I had little time to prepare and engage other participants and convince them to participate with better end result. I should have contacted the pilgrimage organisers early and should taken more help from them. Their support was good but their call for participation might have resulted in more interest from the people. If I had been able to receive a grant from WMF and organised this event as a photography competition with prizes, it would have yielded better results as more participant would be interested to join. Many did not show interest as there was no direct incentive to participate.

I also noted that the participant found making a new account, upload and categorising challenging and inconvenient. I guided them and Wikimedia Commons Android App was bit easier to teach. Some participants took images but were uninterested to upload with labels and description which require considerable efforts for them. Even I found it very long process to upload images taken by me and took days to complete.