Mesmerizing Valley of Flowers: August 2015

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

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

Monday, August 10, 2015

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.