JOURNEY TO MESMERIZING VALLEY AND BACK... DAY 3:

Day 3 (3rd July 2015): Haridwar to Joshimath 

Halfheartedly we took a call to leave towards Gangotri the previous night and as per the plan we packed up and were ready to head out. We had not collected Ganga water yet. We had some spare time before breakfast, so we went to the river to fill up the cans. To our surprise, the water level in the river had receded drastically and the currents were low. It was almost down by 6-7 feet than yesterday! We guessed that the rains might have reduced in the mountains.Also we met few people who had returned from Joshimath 3 days back. They told us that they had to abandon their trip to Badrinath due to landslide mid way. We were confused.

We came back and thought let us have our trust in the supreme and listen to our consciousness and not anyone else at the moment and decided to drive towards Joshimath. If things are okay then move further else return and go elsewhere later. We left Haridwar at 9am and drove towards Joshimath.

After topping up the car at Rishikesh, we lost our way slightly.. thanks to Google maps..it made us lose the way too...But it finally routed us through some lane which we would surely not have thought about going even our dreams. Somehow we managed to get back to the highway. 

As we drove through we had a glimpse of the famous Ram Jhula at Rishikesh.

The road is a two lane, just wide enough for a comfortable drive most of the route (say 90%). The route is too scenic to doze off. It was first time to the magnificent and majestic Himalayas for all of us. As we drove through the long winding roads, we had the huge mountain on one side and a chilling drop into the valley on the other.  

The ascent was light and slow. We could only manage 40-50 km an hour. But one of the best thing was that the weather was clear and bright. En route we drove pass Devprayag. This is where River Bhageerathi joins River Alakananda to form River Ganga. Its a treat to the eyes to watch two different colors of the two rivers. Green colour of Bhageerathi and brown colour of Alakananda can be easily made out.

Dev Prayag - Bhagirathi River (Green) and Alakananda (Brown)

Dev Prayag - Bhagirathi River (Green) and Alakananda (Brownish Green)

We stopped over at a restaurant at Srinagar. Had parathas and lassis again. They had a nice range of Bengali sweets. We had some Rasgullas too. Though not authentic it was not bad either.

Rudraprayag Mandakini River meets Alakananda

As we drove further, we had to took a deviation at Rudraprayag, where River Mandakini joins Alaknanda, towards Joishi Math.

@ Joshi Math our room

Rest of the journey was uneventful. We covered the distance of 270km in about 8 hours including lunch break. We reached Joshi Math at 5pm. We had booked rooms at gmvn tourist house. Finding the hotel was little difficult thanks to lack of sign boards. Rooms were large and clean. We had tea and went around to check the weather and road conditions to go to Badrinath. Initially our plan was to go to Valley of Flowers and then after coming back we were to go to Badrinath. But we changed it looking at the weather forecast. We thought of completing Badrinath and then if weather is good then go to Valley of flowers. Accordingly to find out more information, we headed out.

Joshimath is a nice hilly town. Roads are narrow. But the people are nice and friendly. Police didn't have much information about the road conditions. We were hungry after long travel. We found out a small roadside shop which had some snacks. We decided to try some golgappas. Then we had some aaloo tikki with channa achar curry. A very interesting combination to eat :-). It was very lovely to eat. 

A little roamingA around yielded us nothing. Then dinner was at a small restaurant. Parathas and Lassis again. To go to Badrinath, we planned to park our car in Joshi Math and take a taxi. While returning back to the hotel, we met this local taxi driver Amit Bhandari. Interesting young chap. He agreed to take us to Badrinath next day owing to the weather that night. He told us that some places are damaged, possibly will be repaired that night. We decided to start early next day and went back to hotel and retired for the night. A

JOURNEY TO MESMERIZING VALLEY AND BACK... DAY 2:

Day 2(2nd July 2015): Haridwar 

We took bath in the Holy river Ganga near Vyas Ashram. It was the first time for some of us and definitely exciting for all of us. The river was running full, with good currents and quite cold. But quite muddy water. Looked like it had rained heavily in the mountains (and we were told too that the mountains experiencing heavy rains). After a holy dip in the Ganga we did prayers (japa as they call it in India). Its really a very nice experience. Some of the experience cannot be put in words as many say. Do experience yourselves a dip in Ganga.
A good breakfast was done by people in the Kitchen. The head cook talked our language, Kannada. So it was easy for us to get information about various places in and around Haridwar.
We parked the car in Vyas Mutt and we decided to take an auto and visit some of the tourist spots of Haridwar. We told the auto guy to take us around in Haridwar. He said that he would charge us ₹650/- to take us to 6 different places. We felt it quite reasonable for 5 people in one auto. The auto was fun to go in. All should do it once. I wonder if these autos have any shock absorbers or not. It was just like a body has been fixed to a generator. The driver was a nice guy.
First he took us to Bharath Maata Mandir. A nice tribute to our mighty nation. It has seven floors, each based on a theme representing our nation. Like saints of India, kings of India, mothers of India, freedom fighters of India, states of India, avatars of Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva. 

Then we visited Vaishno devi mandir. A miniature model of the vaishno devi trip to Kashmir. It has a path which leads to top of the building and back down to main hall which has Mata vaishno devi idol. Going through the path, we need to cross some artificially created cave experience, water streams, miniature temples of Lord Shiva, Himalaya peak etc.

Later we visited a temple called bhooma niketan. It has many cement models of historical events of our country like mahabharatha, ramayana, bhagavatha etc. Quite well done. It will surely help people understand the essence of the history (many people call it mythology but I would like to call it our history) of this world.

This was followed by Tulsi Das' Ramcharita manasa mandir. A large prayer hall with entire Ramcharita manasa carved in white marble stones covering the hall. A very blissful place. 

Then we went to Pavan Dham. A temple built of pieces of glass and glass paintings. A remarkable work by the artists there.

We got ourselves dropped near Har Ki Paudi, an area where the Ganga arti happens every evening and a its a big market place It was quite hot and felt like having Lassi. We were so full that we skipped lunch again. We thought of visiting Mansa devi temple and later have lunch. Haridwar has a nice shopping street connecting Mansa devi temple entrance and Har Ki Paudi. We had to cut short some shopping because of heat. We decided to take the ropeway to the temple. To our shock, the waiting time of 2.30 hours was being displayed on the ticket counter. But, the people there told us that it may not take that long, which eventually took 45 minutes to board the ropeway. We visited the temple in next 15 minutes. Then the hell began. The heat was scorching and the line to board ropeway was very long. We had to wait for almost 3 hours to get into the ropeway. We were tired and dehydrated. We took another auto rickshaw back to Vyas Ashram. Late again, so we did not get lunch there. Somehow we found a small eatery had some parathas. Though not great, but it was satisfying. 

It was already 6pm. So we rushed back to Har Ki Paudi for the evening Gangarati. It is a centuries old tradition of worshiping River Ganga for everything it had to offer for the mankind. People gather there in thousands and take oath to keep Ganga clean and pollution free. An awesome atmosphere it was.

We had some roast corn and thought of going back to Vyas Ashram, have dinner (Good dinner was served at Vyas Ashram.) and retire for the day. But the fate had other plans..

After dinner, Babuji told us not to to go further towards joshimath as the place is receiving lot of rain and landslides. We also got frantic calls from our houses to abandon trip. So we decided not to go further, called some friends and made alternate plans to go to Gangotri, Yamunotri, Mussourie etc. and retired for the day.

At Bhooma Niketan

At Bhooma Niketan

At Bhooma Niketan

At Bhooma Niketan

People gathered in Har ki Paudi to see Ganga Aarti

People gathered in Har ki Paudi to see Ganga Aarti

People gathered in Har ki Paudi to see Ganga Aarti

Wonder if any of these have any shock absorbers!

Har Ki Paudi

At the shopping street in Har ki Paudi

Ganga Aarti

Ganga Aarti at hari ki Paudi

People gathered in Har ki Paudi to see Ganga Aarti

JOURNEY TO MESMERIZING VALLEY AND BACK... DAY 1:

Five of us... My cousin, My brother-in-law, My brother-in-law's wife, My wife and myself planned out to go on a trek to one of the most beautiful places in the world "The Valley of Flowers" in Uttarakhand, India. We surfed quite a bit about the place on the internet and thanks to all the bloggers, we found a lot of information and as suggested by many that the best time to visit is July and August of the year, we planned out our holiday between 1st July 2015 and 10th July 2015. We included Haridwar, Badrinath and Delhi in our itinerary.

Day 1 (1st July 2015): Bengaluru-New Delhi to Haridwar

We flew from Bengaluru to Delhi. Air Asia.. fairly a new flight I guess.. It was a pleasant flight all along without any turbulence. Landed in Terminal 3 at 12:15pm. We had booked an Innova through zoom cars. There is a pick up point of zoom cars near Centaur Hotel which is very close to Terminal 3. There is a free bus pick up and drop to the Centaur Hotel from the Airport. We took the service and reached the zoom car pick up point. The Innova was ready and on unlocking the vehicle we found that the battery of the mobile they provide was not working. There were two guys around from the zoom car, who helped us replace the battery. But this really took a long time out of us. But zoom car guys had provided us a very good, fairly new Innova which had run just about 7000km.We could start driving from Delhi only by 2:15pm.

No lunch, but we had some snacks carried with us. Thought we can go on for some time and leave Delhi and stop over in some place for lunch. But the drive through Delhi was bad and drive out of Delhi through Ghaziabad, Meerut and Modinagar was pathetic. Heavy traffic, people crossing road every now and then. By about 4:30pm we were somewhere near Meerut, and we stopped over for "lunch". Some place called "Garden Restaurant". Our expectation out of the place was low may be, the Aloo Paratha and Aloo Piyaz Paratha were very good.

Started from there and till Modinagar and a little beyond the traffic was pathetic. But later the drive was good all the way till Haridwar through Roorkie. We had to pay road tax enroute as we crossed two states, UP and UK. The zoom car was of Delhi registration. There are quite a few road side "Online RTO Tax collection" centres near the border of the state. The one we paid was in a Dhaba! The guy has one lap top with an internet connection and a printer. We paid about 1600 rupees as tax for next 8 days of stay in Uttarakhand. (We had already crossed over UP without paying any taxes... looks like we missed seeing any "Tax collection centers"... he he he.. ). By the time we reached Haridwar it was around 9pm. That's a long drive for just 231km drive.

We had booked a place in Vyas Ashram in Haridwar. The place was really nice. Babuji who takes care of that place had blocked 2 A/c rooms for us. The place is a quite and nice serine one, with a beautiful Vyasa temple surrounded by a lovely garden on the banks of Ganga River. Yes Ganga river flows right behind the Vyas Ashram and we could hear the roar of the flow of the river. The rooms were also not that very expensive. The A/c rooms were priced at 700 rupees a day for a 3 bed room. We booked 2 rooms and boarded there. Since it was quite late, the dinner was not available at Vyas Ashram and hence we walked a few yards to a nice small road side restaurant for dinner. It was a lovely dinner we had. Parathas and Lassis. That was a stomach full. We walked back and retired into our rooms and rested after a long day of travel.

We five...

Garden Around Vyas Ashram- Ganga River on the background

Vyas Ashram- Path Leading to the River

Vyas Mandir

Vyas Mandir