Adi Shankara was an intellectual giant, a genius of linguistics, and above all, a spiritual light and the pride of India. The level of wisdom and knowledge he showed at a very early age made him a shining light for humanity.

He was a prodigal child and an extraordinary scholar with almost superhuman capabilities. At the age of two, he could fluently speak and write Sanskrit. At the age of four, he could recite all the Vedas, and at the age of twelve, he took sanyas and left his home. Even at such a young age, he gathered disciples and started walking throughout the country to re-establish the spiritual sciences.

By the age of thirty-two, he left his body, but in those twenty years from the age of twelve to thirty-two, he crisscrossed India a few times, north to south, east to west, from Kerala right up to Badrinath and back, travelling everywhere in all directions. The man must have been a really brisk walker to do so much walking in a short span of life, and in between he produced thousands of pages of literature.