India is a country of diversity and religiousness where many religions along with different languages have united the people. Since I belong to the Hindu religion, you must have noticed that I mainly visit Hindu religious places, and the main religious places are temples, rivers and the Himalayas. As Hindus, we worship rivers, trees, the sun, the sky, the air, the moon and the sun and this is our way of taking our culture and tradition forward.
In the series of religiousness, today I will take you to Devprayag which has the title of Sangam. Sangam is the place where two rivers meet. Devprayag is a religious place located in the Tehri district of Uttarakhand, which is one of the 5 Prayags. The other Prayags are; Rudraprayag, Vishnuprayag, Karnaprayag and Nandprayag. Today we will visit Devprayag out of the 5 where the Alaknanda and Mandakini rivers meet, moving forward from this confluence, this river actually becomes Ganga. Ganga which is called as Maa in India.
Devprayag is situated at an altitude of 830 meters and it is a religious place. Let me tell you a little about it; According to the ancient Hindu legend, when King Bhagirath did hard penance for years to bring Ganga to earth, as a result of which Maa Ganga was impressed and descended on earth. 33 crore gods and goddesses who witnessed this incident also made Devprayag their place of residence. After this place, holy Maa Ganga was born. According to Hindu scriptures, this place is said to be 5000 years old. I feel proud of my religion and my religious history by reaching such places.
Our journey is long, we have to travel about 520 km on this trip. We load our bags on the scooter and leave at around 11 in the morning. The first stop was Rishikesh which was 70 km away. It took one and a half hours to reach here. It is winter time but I am feeling warm by wearing 3 layers on top and 2 layers below. I am not feeling the cold and wind on the scooter running at a speed of 80 on the road. So amidst the dark clouds, we reach Rishikesh in one and a half hours which is considered to be the abode of sages. Anyway, there is hardly any place here where you will not see sages.
Now the next target is Devprayag which is 71 km from Rishikesh. Mountainous paths start from here but due to it being a 4 lane highway, our average speed is good, moving at a speed of about 60, we reach Teen Dhara first where we stop and drink tea to warm up from the cold air and have a hot lunch. If the weather is clear, then Kedarnath Dome Mountain and Bandarpoonch Peak can be clearly seen from Teen Dhara.
We reach Devprayag at 3 pm. When we look from the road, we see a river of green colour named Mandakini flowing very peacefully while the water of Alaknanda river coming from the left side is aqua and this river is flowing in a Rudra form and merging with Mandakini. I become a witness to this union with folded hands. After parking the scooter in the parking lot located on the road, we go down towards Sangam. After descending about 800 meters, we visit Raghunath temple and go straight to the ghat which is famous as Sangam.
There are many devotees here, some are clicking photos, some are cleaning themselves by washing their hands and feet, some people are taking bath in very cold water and some people are going to 2 small caves located here and offering water to the idol of Lord Shiva and Shivling. I get overwhelmed by the atmosphere and energy here and think why I have not come here till date. I always used to skip this place by coming on this highway but today I felt so good coming here and visiting it. Now I think that I will come here once again and attend the Aarti of Goddess Ganga.
On my way back I buy sweets for myself from a sweet shop, I do not support offering prasad in the temple so I never offer prasad in the temple. I buy a famous sweet of Uttarakhand called Bal Mithai. Half a kilo is available for INR 200. In the next 15 minutes I reach the road from Sangam where my scooter is parked. At the roadhead I drink Sant's juice and finally wear my pearl jacket and gloves and after putting the key in the scooter I move towards my next target Rudraprayag. This was my today's Devprayag Sangam which is very famous all over the country. I hope you liked this place, see you in the next post where I will tell you about other places.
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to translate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from POCO F1 and edited in lightroom, post thumbnail created in adobe photoshop.