Girivalam

கிரிவலம்

Walking the fourteen kilometres around Arunachala with the hill on your right, usually barefoot, usually before dawn or after dark. On a full moon the road carries crowds in the millions.

Before you take this on

  • The road is tarred and most people walk it barefoot. No official heat, footwear or blister advisory exists: every such claim traces to commercial sites. One of them styles itself an official HR&CE portal and is not one.
  • Crowds on full moon nights are enormous — around twenty lakh on Chitra Pournami, with general-queue waits over three hours, and about forty lakh expected for Karthigai Deepam.
  • The hill climb at Deepam is separately restricted by the district administration under Madras High Court orders: 2,500 devotees only, ages eighteen to fifty, photo identity plus a doctor's certificate, one approved route, drinking water only, and no camphor or other inflammable articles.

What you do

  1. Start at the Arunachaleswarar temple at the foot of the hill, before dawn or after sunset.
  2. Walk the ring road so that the hill stays on your right the whole way.
  3. Stop at the eight lingam shrines set at the compass points, and bow to the hill from each.
  4. Keep silence, or sing.
  5. Do not ride. Return to where you started.

Why it is done

More than one account explains this custom. They are given separately because they are separate — merging them into one story would invent a consensus that does not exist.

The Arunachala Mahatmyam, as usually cited

The practice is attributed everywhere to the Arunachala Mahatmyam, a Sanskrit text appearing in the Skanda Purana and reckoned at perhaps seven or eight hundred years old. But the verses actually published under that title by the ashram at the hill concern seeing Arunachala, thinking of it, and residing within three yojanas of it — they do not mention walking round it. No verse prescribing the circuit could be located. Given how confidently the attribution is made, that absence is worth stating.

  • Purana: Arunachala Mahatmyam, verses as published in Ramana Maharshi's Tamil rendering by Sri Ramanasramam — on seeing, thinking of and residing near the hill archive.arunachala.org · seen 2026-09-18

The Arunachala Puranam, a separate Tamil text

A distinct and later work, the Tamil Arunachala Puranam of Saiva Ellappa Navalar, carries teaching on the practice attributed to Nandikesa and Sadasiva. It is routinely conflated with the Sanskrit Mahatmyam and is not the same text.

  • Scholarship: Sri Ramanasramam on walking around the hill, citing the Tamil Arunachala Puranam gururamana.org · seen 2026-09-18

Ramana Maharshi

A modern teaching position rather than a scriptural argument, and unusually permissive: that it is good for everybody to make the circuit of the hill, and that it does not even matter whether one has faith in it. Slow walking is held to harmonise the body as an asana does.

  • Scholarship: Sri Ramanasramam, Ramana Maharshi on giri pradakshina gururamana.org · seen 2026-09-18

Put simply

You walk the whole way around the hill — fourteen kilometres, usually barefoot and usually at night — keeping the hill on your right.

Where it is observed

Sources

  • Government: Tamil Nadu HR&CE, Arunachaleswarar Temple — the hill given as 2,668 feet annamalaiyar.hrce.tn.gov.in · seen 2026-09-18
  • Scholarship: Sri Ramanasramam e-guide — the circuit given as approximately 9 miles or 14 kilometres, and the advice to start early or in the evening sriramana.org · seen 2026-09-18
  • Press: DT Next — around 20 lakh devotees performing girivalam on Chitra Pournami, with the district's waste, personnel and queue figures dtnext.in · seen 2026-09-18

All practices