Baba Barfani is gone. Five days into this year’s Amarnath Yatra, the ice stalagmite Hindu pilgrims worship as a form of Lord Shiva has nearly vanished from its cave in Kashmir. It is the third year running that the ice has failed to survive a week.
The stalagmite stood nearly seven feet tall in May, according to photographs the Border Security Force released. By July 7, it had shrunk by close to 90 percent.
The Amarnath Cave sits 3,888 meters up in the Himalayas, reachable only on foot, mule or palanquin. The ice forms each spring as water dripping from the cave roof freezes into a shape resembling a Shiva lingam. In 2018 and 2022, it stood 12 to 15 feet tall for weeks. This year it barely reached two feet before melting began.
The 57-day pilgrimage began July 3 and runs through August 28. More than 56,000 pilgrims visited in the first three days, 18.6 percent more than last year. Registration through July 9 is full, and officials have told unregistered pilgrims to wait.
Aman Chawla, a pilgrim who completed his darshan this week, said officials should move the pilgrimage earlier. “It started on June 28, but if it had begun around June 10 or 12, more devotees would have had the opportunity to witness the holy Shivling,” he said.
A Pattern, Not an Accident
This year’s five-day melt is not an isolated event. The ice lingam melted within 29 days in 2018, 38 days in 2020, 28 days in 2022, and within about a week in 2024. In 2013, it melted within the first 10 days of the yatra, marking the first time since helicopters began landing at the cave in 2008 that the lingam disappeared so early. This year matched that five-day record.
The Science
Experts point to hotter regional temperatures, weaker winter snowfall, and heat from the crowds themselves. Between 13,000 and 20,000 pilgrims enter the cave on peak days, and their body heat works against the sub-zero conditions the ice needs to survive.
The numbers behind this winter back that up. Jammu and Kashmir received 100.6 millimeters of precipitation between December 2025 and February 2026, against a normal of 284.9 mm, a deficit of 65 percent, according to data reported by Down To Earth. February alone saw an 89 percent shortfall. Independent weather analyst Faizan Arif said every winter since 2019-20 has ended below normal, making 2025-26 the seventh consecutive deficient winter in the region.
That local pattern fits a wider Himalayan trend. A study in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment found that high-altitude zones of the Himalayas have warmed nearly 50 percent faster than the global average since 1950. “The Himalayan ice is decreasing more rapidly than we thought,” said Nick Pepin, a climate scientist involved in the research.
Roads, Ropeways and a Shrinking Buffer
Over the past two decades, the yatra route has changed as much as the climate around it. Narrow trekking paths have widened into roads that carry jeeps and trucks. Langars and generators that once sat lower down the mountain now operate close to the cave itself. The Centre has approved a ropeway project, and officials are discussing a tunnel between Sheshnag and Panchtarni.
Former Principal Chief Conservator of Forests O.P. Sharma, who also served as Director of the J&K Ecology and Environment Department, said the ecological cost is visible along the route. Rare Himalayan herbs, including Pleurospermum and Wintergreen, are vanishing, he said, and the mass uprooting of creeping juniper for firewood is causing soil erosion and mudslides. He has called for an immediate ban on non-biodegradable items, including bottled water and plastic-packaged food.
Politics and Warning
Iltija Mufti, a leader of the Peoples Democratic Party, blamed deforestation, illegal mining, poor waste management and falling water levels. She said environmental concerns carry “no power currency” in Kashmir’s politics, and called for a conservation strategy modeled on Bhutan.
The Shrine Board, meanwhile, has capped daily pilgrim numbers on the Baltal and Chandanwari routes, following Supreme Court directions, and stationed security checks along the way.
Without stronger protections, Mufti warned, “Kashmir will cease to exist.”
Faith Without the Ice
Pilgrims keep climbing anyway. “Baba has vanished, yet faith remains,” said Divyanshu Khanna, another devotee. “The divine presence of Baba can still be felt in every particle of that sacred place.”
That faith is now colliding with a harder fact: the cave needs cold, snow and distance from crowds to keep forming the ice each spring, and this winter gave it none of the three. Scientists and mountain veterans describe the same mountain in different words, one through precipitation data, the other through memory of what July used to look like. Both point to the same conclusion, that the lingam’s disappearance is not a single bad year but the latest entry in a seven-year run of dry winters and two decades of expanding infrastructure on a fragile Himalayan slope.
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