Himalayan Jaunt - Part 3

The downhill proved a little difficult by goda, as one had to really hold on to the horse’s saddle. Anyway we took lesser time to climb downhill and reached Gowrikund safely and in one piece.

Our next Yatra was towards Badrinath. Badrinath was about 200 kms from Kedar. We decided to cover it in one stretch without any breaks. The travel towards Badri was also very memorable. Lots of people travel to Badri by walk. On the way I saw a man along with his family walking towards Badri. You may ask what is so amusing about this. This guy was completely nude and was walking towards Badri. The kind of Bakthi this man had exhibited was awe-inspiring.

The weather was a little rough and it was beginning to drizzle. Landslides were very common in that part of the mountains, which we were travelling. This fact kept all of us awake inspite of our tired bodies.

We traveled besides the frozen Alaknanda River towards Bardri.

We reached Badri around 3:00 PM. We met the head priest who was known to the guide. He was given the title “Rawal Ji’ and was greatly respected by the locals. The conversation with Rawal Ji proved to be a great learning experience. This man from Kerala was speaking of the National Integration that existed in our country that may not be apparent in the surface but when we observe the nitty grit’s of the practices followed one could appreciate it. He was speaking of Adishankara who traveled by foot the length and breadth of this country establishing practices in temples to restore the National integration, which was slowly detirioting. He says the priests of the Badri temple are always from down south – Kerala and pandits from North India conduct the Pooja in Rameshwaram. There are a number of practices, which were established by him (Adishankara), which keeps India intact if not for any other thing. When we left the place, each one of us I am sure could not take of the round chubby “Tejaswi” face from our minds.

We had a great Darshan of Badri Vishal, Matha Lakshmi and Kuber. There was a Tapth Kund in Badri too.
We then proceeded towards “Mana” the last Indian village in the Indo – China border. We reached there in about 10 minutes from Badri. The last teashop in the Indo – China Border was attracting a lot of attention from the tourists. We also visited the Vyasa Gufa (The cave of Ved Vyasa) where he composed all his great works from Ramayana to the compiling of the four Vedas. The cave was charged with energy I should say. The vibrations were too good for even a lay man to miss. Then we had the rarest of darshans of river Saraswathi that originates in one of the glaciers near Badri. She is supposed to be an underground phenomenon and even in the triveni sangam at Allahabad one cannot see Saraswathi.

We did a bit of shopping in Badri. I bought a lot Malas, which were made of Sunstones, Spatika etc.,

It was about 7 PM when we left Badri and started our downhill Yatra towards Pipalkoti. We stayed overnight in the same Cottage and started our next leg of the yatra.

We visited a number of small but significant temples on the way back to Srinagar. We visited the TrijugNarayan temple, Dhari Devi temple etc., We finally landed in Srinagar the next day for lunch.
From there we proceeded to Rishikesh – Rishikesh is a very spiritually vibrant place with a number of Ashrams. We stayed at Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s Ashram in the Banks of river Ganga. We also visited places like Swami Sivananda Ashram, Ram, Lakshman Jula etc.,

I had a bad ligament tear near the Lakshman jula, which I carried home as a gift from Lakshman temple.

We traveled back to Haridwar and visited Manasa Devi temple and the Chandi Devi temples. These temples are situated in small Hillocks on the either sides of Haridwar. We had to travel by rope cars to these temples and were great fun.

One the way back to Delhi we visited Matura (Krishna janma bhumi) and Vrindavan gardens where the Raas – Leela took place. The Raas – leela grounds is filled with Tulsi Trees. The people of this place say that each of these leaves is a gopi and even today at midnight the Raas – leela of Krishna and thousands of Gopi’s take place. The windows of the houses that face the Raas – Leela grounds are always shut.

We returned to Delhi and flew back to Chennai with a great treasure in the form of Memories of this trip, which has left behind indelible experiences and marks on our lives.