The Virgin Goddess residing on the mountain - Part 1 (the climb)

One day at work I randomly asked my colleague if he would be interested in checking out the Vaishno Devi Temple in the state of J&K. He immediately said "Yes". That's how quickly the plan to make that trip happened. In fact, the legend of the temple is that you don't plan to go there at your leisure. The goddess calls you to come visit her and you're drawn to the temple. The way this trip came together certainly gives more evidence for that belief.

The temple is on top of a hill 5200 ft in elevation. The road to the top is about 12.5 kms long. There are only four ways to reach the top - walking, on a horse, being carried in a "paalki" or in a helicopter. Walking is free of course! The rest have government fixed prices. There are two schools of thought on climbing up - you either climb in the daytime or in the night. Nightime has the advantage of lower temperatures, but you climb all night long and it'll throw off your sleep schedule. The daytime trip of course means that the entire trip falls into a logical pattern during the weekend with the added plus that almost all the eateries on the way are open. We chose the day walk but we should have starter walking earlier in the day. (We reached Jammu at 5am and Katra, the base of the hill, at 6:30am. By the time we picked a hotel, got ready in it and reached the base of the mountain it was 9:30am.) The day didn't get too hot but because we were late in climbing up, we had to hurry while climbing down.

We carried light bags with us - change of clothing and jackets if necessary. The climb started off easy enough but the third guy in our group slept poorly on the bus earlier and he had to constantly sit and recharge his batteries. I was fine with the hike but I would have preferred a slightly faster pace. At the midway point we had a choice between a slightly longer path which took us to a minor temple of interest on the way, or skip it and choose the shorter path (6.5 kms vs. 5.5 kms). In our tired condition we chose the shorter path which was a brilliant choice in hindsight. All along the way we kept rehydrating ourselves as much as possible. We stopped for lunch at one of the many eateries on the way and had vada-sambar. (Why I couldn't find decent vada-sambar in Chandigarh/Punjab/Haryana but suddenly found great-tasting sambar all way in J&K I'll never understand!) We were getting more and more tired but while we took breaks almost every 0.3 kms in the beginning, we didn't stop even once in the last 2 kms. We were almost running in the end and finally we made it, 6 hours after starting the climb.

The mini-city on top was well-laid out, very linear. We got our token for the darshan (in exchange for the registration ticket that we had obtained at about 6:30am when we reached Katra) and that gave us slot #198 and #196 was going in then - not too shabby. So we went to take some quick showers and change before the darshan. In the public showers there, the cold water was very refreshing. I didn't bring an extra shirt so I wasn't too keen on showering but I did want to freshen up with the cold water. However once I got there, there was a gentleman urinating in the shower (and looking at me, daring me to say something to him). That was just too disgusting - I mean, I understand that as a nation we have the freedom to urinate everywhere written in the constitution, but this is a temple dammit! I just quickly threw some water on my face and went out. The other two had finished their showers and we were ready for the darshan.