CRAWLED 300 MILES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 56, 29 November 1937, Page 8

CRAWLED 300 MILES

-Own Correspondont.)

Two Sons Die on Indian Pilgrimage

(By Air Mail-

DELHl, Oct. 2b. The man who set out from his native village of Manosa, in the Sirmur State, with two sons more than two months ago on a "cdawling" pilgrimage to Hardwar, 300 miles distant, has arrived at the sacred cdty and thus fulfilled the vow he made as thanksgiving for the recovery of his sons from typhoid. He reached the end of the grim nilgrimage alone, his sons having died on the road. At the end of August the pilgrims, regardless of the entreaties of their relatives and a doctor's warning, set out to cover the journey to Hardwar in 68 daily stages of five miles, crawling on their hands and knees. Oi the seventh day the strength of the younger son gave out, but his death was ascribed to the will of God and ■ the father and the other son went on. Day after day their purpose was unshaken. They crawled through intense heat, resting only at intervals when their swollen legs and arms would carry them no farther ; and then, o« the fiftyeighth day of the pilgrimage, when they were only 10 miles from Hardwar, the second soii became too weak to go any farther and also- died. . His purpose unshaken, the villager attended the funeral rites of his son and crawled alone to Hardwar.