On Sri Lanka’s sacred mountain Sri Pada, the stairway to the summit can stop moving on full-moon days and crowded pilgrimage weekends. A 2009 eyewitness account describes climbers reaching the final yards only to spend more than two hours in a stationary queue. On another busy day, the line extended almost two kilometres downhill to Indikatupana. The narrow route separates ascent from descent; when people tried to use the wrong side, both flows stalled.
Many pilgrims also remained at the summit for sunrise, while the worship area itself was limited. Speed of climbing could not solve this queue. Devotion at the sacred footprint, time spent on the peak and the descending stream converged at one point, making the final metres longer in time than much of the mountain journey.