Girivalam
Girivalam: walking around the mountain
The central practice of Arunachala ~ walking the fourteen kilometres around the hill, keeping it always on your right. Everything you need, from the practical to the profound.
The first time I walked Girivalam I got almost everything slightly wrong. I started too late, so the sun caught me on the long open stretch past Adi Annamalai. I wore the wrong shoes. I didn't know which of the shrines were the lingams and which were just roadside temples, so I either stopped at everything or hurried past things I later wished I'd seen.
None of it mattered, in the end ~ the walk holds you regardless. But it would have been gentler with a little knowing. So these guides carry the practical detail (when to start, what to wear, where the eight lingams are) alongside the meaning, because Girivalam is both a fourteen-kilometre walk and, if you let it be, something rather more.