After planning for a year, both of us are not able to get out of our comfort zone. Now it is not only difficult but impossible to avoid the lure of winter, quilt and hot coffee. The icing on the cake is that these two are completely immersed in each other... like rivers jumping into the ocean. One thing in all is this that with all their efforts, they leave Badrinath with their bags of plans on their shoulders. Saying "Jai Badri Vishal" while leaving the threshold of the house has become like a custom...which is followed with full devotion even today.
The shining building in the photo is of Badrinath temple. Meaning the height above sea level is 3300 meters, this height is enough to attract snow and devotees. Standing on the banks of Alaknanda, we both sometimes look at the temple and sometimes at each other's hands which are wrapped in each other's fingers. Saying "Let's have darshan", we cross the bridge over the river. As soon as we entered the temple premises, the cool breeze from the Neelkanth mountain touched our faces as if the king of the hills had blessed us.
Photography is prohibited inside the temple so we give ourselves a chance to bless our eyes. It is strictly prohibited to carry shoes, slippers, leather belts or clothes in Hindu temples. Taking off our shoes outside, we stand with folded hands in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to have the darshan of Badri Vishal. It is evening and the time for Aarti is about to come. We stop till Aarti...all the devotees are standing in front of God and trying to get his blessings. Neither of us has any greed, we are just there and are moving towards absorbing the energy spread there within us.
After the Aarti, we come out with the Prasad. The cold outside is unbearable for our bare feet. As soon as possible we put on our shoes and surrender ourselves to the warmth. The supernatural energy spread here has spread forever in the hearts of all the devotees and now this energy will give courage to everyone to stand in bad times. In the darkness of the night, the snow on the peak of Neelkanth mountain is glowing like a white firefly. Losing my senses, I just become a witness to this scenario, I stare at it as if I will put it all in my pockets and take it home.
Now it's time to go back, go to the hot springs on the banks of Alaknanda. There is not so much crowd here now. I have taken bath before entering the temple and wear clean clothes as per decorum. There is a natural hot water pool here, from where hot water containing sulfur keeps coming out all the time. Now since there are no people here, I go down into the pond again. It is only after entering the water that one can understand how relaxing it can be to enter warm water at -4 degrees.
After spending 7 days here we return to our home. We travel about 450 km by road and after reaching home, we get busy in the work in which we are expert and that is lying under the quilt. Our expenditure on this 7 day long journey was approximately Rs 9500. I hope you liked our journey. See you in the next post where I will present before you another temple situated in the lap of Himalayan mountains.
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to tranlate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from poco f1and edited in snapseed.