August Getaway

A long weekend guys, to celebrate janamashtami and Independence day. We must note that in India, religion is celebrated with as much enthusiasm as our Independence. Happy Krishna Janamashtami to all. There was a time in my kife when I didn't really believed that God do exists and was very keen to apply practicality to every ancient fables and religious stories...but then miracles happened and I started believing in God.

And when these celebrations and holidays combine, long weekends happen and we get a chance to plan a trip to celebrate our life. We planned a trip to visit the kangra valley-as Himachal tourism states, Dhauladhar trail. we visited Baba Balak Nath shrine in Oona, and further visited Jwala Devi, kangra devi and went ahead to stay overnight at Dharamshala. But as it was destined to happen, due to heavy crowd of holiday goers, we were not able to find a place to stay at Dharamshala, and then we had to go back to Chamunda devi, which was approximately 40-50 Kms from there. We stayed overnight there, and visited Chamunda devi temple in Morning and went back to Dharamshala.

The Dharamshala story
Once we were there in Dharamshala, we reallised why there was so much crowd thronging the place last night. We were encircled by clouds and cold wind blew on us every now and then. I had been to Manali, Shimla & Mussorie but they are not this much good at this time of the year.
We went ahead to Mcleod Ganj, a place named after the then Governer of H.P, who had proposed Dharamshala to be the summer capital of India during British reign. He was that much in love with this place. The Mcleod ganj has got a beautiful market with topsy turvy roads due to its hilly location, and A Budhist temple. This temple is known to be Mini Lhasa-the second home of Dalai lama. It also has an education institute where monks are trained and educated.
It started raining, and we were thrilled by the weather, my 3 month old Kiddo had to be covered by lots of warm clothes to protect from the weather. It was the first time she had seen such a weather. The temple was beautiful, with Gold statues of Budha and other Budhist deities. The enviornment was peaceful, even after so many tourists visiting the place that day.

We visited the temple and then went further ahead on the hill to visit Bhagsu Nag temple which was barely 3-4 Kms ahead of Mcleod ganj. This temple has got a legend behind it, which says that there was a Mayawi king by the name of Bhagsu of Rajasthan and on the plea of his Praja, he came searching for water. He went to the Kailash mansarover and he put all the water in his kamandal through his magical powers, it is said that this was the place where he was resting on his way back and the Devtas found him and defeated him to get the water back. During the fight, the water fell from his kamandal and beneath the Temple, a pure stream of water is flowing, which flows continously throughout the year.

The water was so pure and they even have made a swimming pool made in the middle of the valley, just outside the temple. The sight was amazing, and then we went back to stay overnight at Chintapurni Temple. We visited Cintapurni Temple next day amidst a lot of crowd thronging the place due to Sangrand festival- a monthly ritual falling on the same day. and then we headed back towards our busy city life where our offices and home were waiting.

Will be posting pics of trips in the next post.

Cheers!