Kasar Devi is a shrine to a form of Durga on a pine-covered ridge about eight kilometres north of Almora town. Government tourism material dates the temple to the second century CE, and the present structure was rebuilt in 1948 by the Birla family. Swami Vivekananda meditated in a solitary cave on this hill in September 1890, and he recorded the experience in his diaries.
Walter Evans-Wentz, who later translated The Tibetan Book of the Dead, stayed on the ridge, and the Danish mystic Alfred Sorensen, known locally as Sunyata Baba, lived in the area for decades. Lama Anagarika Govinda and his partner Li Gotami made the ridge their home, and the Bodh Ashram meditation center they were associated with still stands on Crank's Ridge.
During the counterculture years of the 1960s and 1970s the ridge became a stop on the hippie trail, visited by Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, George Harrison and Cat Stevens.
