Vaishno Devi Darshan

A trip to holy shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi in Jammu holds a special place in the heart of hindu devotes. It is often said that you go for darshan only when Mata calls you. So after 2 years, I planned for a trip without any companions to start with, during one of my week offs from job. I started calling my friends in Delhi and Chandigarh to re-live nostalgic college memories. Finally, Ankush from Chandigarh and Noddy from Ludhiana agreed but I needed someone to accompany me from Delhi, so I got my cousin Abhishek on board. Finally, the cast was ready to rock n roll.


At such a short notice, we couldn't get any train tickets to Jammu, so decided to reach Chandigarh by train and take bus to Jammu along with Ankush from there on. Noddy decided to join us directly at Katra, a small town from where 12.5 Km trek begins to Shrine (commonly called Bhawan). This was the first time Abhishek went out of station without his parents and totally on his own. The train was more or less empty so Abhishek fond of window seat quickly grabbed one with unfortunately me sitting next to him. As the train steamed both of us went in an inception type slumber only to be woken up at the next station with our tummies craving for food. Then came a saviour, bread pakora with green chutney wala which Abhishek so desperately wanted to have. His demand was over-ruled by a dictator type elder brother, as I had all the money. Then we brought some kaccharr-paccharr (biscuits n coke) to keep our burning tummies cool till we reached Chandigarh.

The fragrance of city beautiful was so heartening that reminded me of my college days. We had some time to catch our bus to Katra so headed directly to Panjab University for dinner at Student Centre (known as Stu-C). Cheap and best food with the beautiful crowd around certainly left both of us smiling. Dinner was done, but 6 foot; 55 Kg Abhishek was still hungry. God knows what more he wanted, probably a chicken ham. We rushed back to Sector 22 theka (wine n bear shop) to catch Ankush and our comfortable sleeper bus. No, Ankush wasn’t busy drinking rather thekas’ are often used as landmarks in Chandigarh. We boarded the bus, got comfortable and it was time to sleep.




Abhishek, Ankush and me got up in the morning at Jammu where people were being de-roasted from bus as there were not many passengers for Katra being an off-season. Bus wala arranged a Tata Sumo for us and we moved towards Katra. It was raining heavily and a thought went through my mind that we were missing someone and that was the fourth idiot Noddy who was supposed to reach directly. With Noddy in the crew, we were pretty sure something silly would happen looking at his past record. As I called him to know his whereabouts , he very politely said that he hasn’t even moved out of his home in Mukaria (small town at the border of Punjab and J&K) as it has been raining and bus stop is 2Kms away from his home . Though these things are expected out of him, I thanked God that I did not come alone relying on Noddy to join me.

Reaching Katra, it was raining heavily and we had only one umbrella to share. We brought couple of more umbrellas and rented a room to freshen up readying ourselves for a trek. I went to take yatra parchi, an essential travel slip for Vaishno Devi darshan while Ankush and Abhishek arranged our return bus tickets keeping in mind normal 16 hour trek-darshan round trip to katra. As we started with our 12.5 Kms one way trek, I could not resist buying Rs.10 plastic rain coats available everywhere at Katra. We brought three and moved ahead for security checks at ‘Baan Ganga’ . With a pleasant breeze accompanying light rains, it was a feeling I was craving for months. We moved on enthusiastically carrying a small bag-pack wearing full size plastic raincoat. As soon as first set of 509 stairs came, Abhishek and Ankush were rearing to take them while I was against it. We had a small argument and finally gave in for majority. After 150 steps, enthusiasm was gone and I could feel that I had no stamina left. I was sweating like a pig and started feeling un-easy after 300 steps where there was a stair exit. It wasn’t rocket science to understand that heat dissipated from my body was getting trapped because of plastic shield around me in the avatar of raincoat. I sat down grasping for air, ordered a lemonade made of un-filtered water and banta (drink with a marble bottle) along with a topping of fresh rainy water. I had mine and then Abhishek’s though it was terrible according to him. Meanwhile, Ankush moved on along the stairs and I, being the elder brother black-mailed Abhishek to take the normal route else would tell his mom some story that he didn’t behave properly. Abhishek relented as his ‘travel alone’ career was on the line according to his behaviour report given by me back home. We moved on reaching half way mark at Adh-kuwari.


We unanimously decided to take an easy route which is more or less flat. It had stopped raining by then and back-pack was being carried by Abhishek for most of the journey. It doesn’t look good that elders carry load while younger ones travel lightly. Meanwhile, Ankush being a mechanical engineer was busy optimizing his work done per unit time. I believe Noddy was still waiting for rain gods to stop so that he could move 2 kms from his home. We could feel the clouds kissing our face and divine greenery of mountains all around us. Realising that we were moving too fast, Abhishek and Ankush further increased their pace and started overtaking one and all. I was left behind trekking like a senior citizen. Having trekked 10Kms till now, site of Bhawan was a great sigh of relief which filled us with a fresh spark of energy (Gatorade, Redbull types).

Reaching bhawan in less than 3 hours, we sensed that we had left all the rush behind, we quickly took a locker and went into the darshan queue chanting bhajans along with fellow divine souls. As we entered the main guffa, adrenalin rush went past me reminding of my yester-year visits. A sense of achievement, love, compassion came and there I was at the foot steps to Mata Vaishno Devi. Since the darshan lasted a few seconds, we felt somewhat disappointed with the insatiable desire to spend more time in the gufa. But nonetheless, we came out of darshan, full of life brimming with energy blossoming like flowers. It was now time to have some food and much deserved rest. We had a standard bhojnalaya food consisting of Rajma-chawal. Having covered 12.5 Kms on foot, I thought we will give some rest to our tired legs but Abhishek and Ankush had other plans to head back to Katra right away. Com’on guys i don’t play football or go to gym daily like you guys do. That was the time I sincerely missed Noddy because he would have been on my side on this.


We started our journey back and moved up the hill towards Bhairo mandir(temple). After Bhairo darshan, we enjoyed the heavenly view from the hill top where we could see Bhawan, Katra and Jammu all from one place. As the dusk arrived, we started a trek down the hill towards Adh-Kuwari (i.e. mid-way). We took stairs for descent while our legs showed first signs of discomfort. We carried on while the black sky got covered with white stars. At Adh-kuwari, we had jalebis, sat for a while and carried on our descent through stairs. Abhishek and Ankush were again ahead of me but by now a feeling of creating a record of sorts based on total journey time had caught up with me as well. We had started at 1PM and by 9 PM we were back in Katra covering a total 25 Kms( though I must admit, 3kms was in auto-rickshaw and 1 Km was a short-cut but anyways 25 Km trek looks a mammoth figure). 8 hours of total trek time and we were back in our hotel room. Tired to our bones, we had our dinner and slammed onto the bed.


After a good night sleep with our batteries charged, it was time to head home. We took a comfortable bus back to Chandigarh which had a share of its own incident. We got the only seat in the bus where there was no window instead window was covered with a plywood. Abhishek whose first love is window seat was furious at bus wala. The idea of going in the sarkari (government) bus finally calmed him down. All along the way, starved Abhishek was craving for Chicken Ham Sub while I denied him the permission to have one. At 10:30PM finally, after much delay we finally reached Chandigarh. As the trip came to an end, it was time for the last supper. All three of us sprinted to Sector-17 market to have food at beloved Oven Fresh restaurant where we had lavishly spent ‘n’ amount of our parents’ hard earned money, thanks to superb preparation of enchiladas, pizza and grilled sandwich with uncle chips (yummyzzz). We mistook chilli sauce as tomato ketchup and were left with a burning tongue and teary eye. As I took the last bite of the pizza, it was time to say ‘c ya’ to Ankush and head back to Delhi with memories of this refreshing wonderful trip.