So finally Chardham is complete. Last dham to visit was Yamunotri. If you are not very religious, then Yamunotri can be skipped. Not worth it. Very dirty place. Horse shit and shit through out the route and Yamuna has been made dirty at the start itself by us humans. I was ashamed of us as indians looking at Yamunotri mess
A little more details on our chardham yatra.As per me if you plan for such road trip, take a traveller/ Van with driver. No point in driving yourself on uttarakhand roads. ROADS are under construction or just bad in most parts. Btw, our Driver for our Hindu religious Journey is a Muslim but he knows more about all the places of workship and knows the stories. He is shouting all the Jaikaras throughout the trip. We all just say" JAI" after his Jaikara. At few places, he made us visit temple saying journey is not complete if we dont go to that temple.
Uttarakhand is also called Devbhumi. If you know lord Shiva stories, all stories originated in Uttarakhand and there are temples for these stories as witness. We visited a temple called Tri Yugi Narayan temple where Shiv and Parvati were married with Vishnu as witness. A little ahead of this temple is a cave where Parvati did tapasya to win shiv as her husband. Some priest informed that Ambanis visit this temple quite frequently!.
Then there is a temple where the statue is of headless Ganesha. Ahead of Badrinath temple is a cave where supposedly Mahabharat was written by Ganesh along with Ved Vyas.
Then there is a temple in uttar kashi where there is a very big Trishul and the story is that the goddness killed Mahisasur with that Trishul. There has to be a way of carbon dating these things.
The story of Kedar nath is linked to mahabarat after the kurshretra war. Pandava sought forgiveness from Shiv but Shiv didnt want to forgive as Pandavas had done Guru hatya. So he hid under the himalayas in form of bull. Pandavas kept looking for the bull and on spotting a part of the bull, shivlinga was made there. So Kedarnath is the bull's hump shivlinga. There is another kedar where bull's front legs were seen called Tungnath The bull's head is at Pashupati Nath in Nepal. Another Kedar temple has bull hair.
Overall very interesting trip. I really wish there is one conclusive way to prove that Shiv did exist. He would have been a very interesting, engimatic and very lovable man. As such most Indian women like him a lot 😉
Btw, we also planted pine trees on the way to Gangotri as part of tree plantation drive organised by Borders Road Organisation and army. So next time anyone visits Gangotri, one of the pine trees is planted by me.
One thing was ubiquitous : plastic water bottles and chips packets being littered every where. If I look up, I can compare India's natural beauty with Norway. If I look down, then I know I am in India.
Just one more thing to mention in India where Army takes over , the work done is excellent . Roads to Badrinath and gangotri are excellent as these are end points for India and managed by Army and BRO. Where local govt is incharge, work drags. Roads to Kedarnath and Yamunotri are really bad.
Overall an interesting trip.My quota of Hindu religious visits is over for next few years. Next visit will have to be to beaches and Bars.😉
PS: i got hurt post Gangotri trip. So the bandage