A
divine invitation
Most of you might have heard of the lyrics of this
song, “Chalo bulawa aaya he, Maate ne bulaaya he” whose English translation
goes like this: let’s visit the divine together as we have received a divine
call from the Goddess herself. My journey to Vaishnodevi was similar to it, the
situations under which we went there were too challenging. Now when I reflect
back, I truly have to admit that without the divine invitation, it could never
have been possible for me to visit there.
It was a family plan to visit Vaishnodevi – in fact
it had always been in our wish list. The enjoyment of the journey increases
manifold when the number of participants of the journey increases. We were 7
members for the journey. We prepared a layout of this plan with another family
from our closest acquaintances and chose the month of March to visit as it
would offer a moderate climatic condition for the journey. Then we started
making preparation for the journey which included gathering relevant
information, acquiring reservation in train, packing up the luggage. Something
unfortunate happened before few days of the journey, two members of the journey
got seriously ill and they had to be admitted in the hospital, the journey was
about to get cancelled when we could get to witness the miraculous recovery of
them and after receiving the agreement from them regarding the commencement of
the journey, we started from the pit stop – our home.
The journey was full of trials, we felt
as if all the adversities were designed by the Goddess herself to test our will
power, patience and belief. Belief is the fundamental foundation of any
religion. In fact, many concepts exist because of the belief system. I was
lucky to witness many miracles of the Goddess. Is not the fact of climbing up
to the temple of Vaishnodevi few hours after getting discharged from the
hospital the testimony of the mercy of the Goddess? The opening line of this
itinerary kept reverberating inside my mind though out the journey.
We boarded the train Jammu Tawi from Kanpur to Jammu
Tawi. It took 24 hours including the delay of 7 hours which was quite expected.
After reaching the station Jammu Tawi the next day at around 5:30p.m, the first
job to be done was to quickly head towards Katra so that we could start
climbing to temple from the same night itself. The delay of the journey in
train put our plan little out of place as we made the return ticket to home the
next day at 4p.m. So this was a challenge for us to complete the entire process
of ascending and descending the mountain within the limited time and pack up
the entire journey within a deadline less than 24 hours!
Without
wasting anytime, we hired a taxi and headed to Katra. I had already been lost
in the scenic beauty of Jammu the moment I landed at the station, I was very
meticulously observing everything in the faint background of the evening. It
took nearly one and a half hour to reach Katra from Jammu Tawi station. On
reaching Katra, we had to do book tickets for Darshan. After getting freshen up
in a hotel which we booked at Katra , we began the most awaited journey at
around 9p.m from the hotel.
It was raining so we hired a taxi to reach the main
entrance of the temple. After the formalities of the checking got over at the
entrance, we were signalled to commence our journey. The unexpected rain made
the temperature to fall even more, intensifying the prevalent cold. We were
wrapped in winter clothes and rain coats. We purchased a stick to support the
process of climbing.
I could get to find different provisions for
devotees to climb up the temple- through horses and palanquin. Devotees were
from different places of the country and the group of devotees included the
people from different age groups even newly born! We chanted Goddess’s name to
ease down the fatigue of the journey. The slope was getting stiffer as we moved
higher and we were accompanied by other fellow devotes by foot or carried by
horses and palanquin bearers. It got dark and I was enjoying every bit of that
adventure. Climbing by staying awake all night was no less than a dream to me.
The higher we climbed, more blessed and satisfied we felt about taking decision
of this journey. When I used to look down from the location where I was from
time to time, I was awestruck by the starry jewelled view of the ground due to
the illuminating light from different shops. What a moment; no less than a
dream – stars all around; up above the sky and surprisingly beneath and we were
in the middle of this heaven!
The weather
turned rude after we reached Ardhkuwari, I would connect it to the upcoming
tests that we had to appear to get a Darshan of Vaishnodevi. Ardhakuwari , as
the name suggests , is situated at the
middle of the journey to the temple . We
had to halt there for few minutes because of heavy rain fall accompanied by
hail storm. Many devotees returned from there after hearing the cases of deadly
landslide but we were determined and continued with an utmost faith at our
hearts.
It was too cold at the temple since it was at the
height of 5200feets .The temple is situated at Trikuta Hills. The sight of the
temple to us was no different from the sight of the water that would appear to
a thirsty deer in the desert. Fortunately, it was no imagination, it was the
reality! And yes, we were absorbing that divine reality! It was the most
satisfying scene for us after having covered the distance of 14 kms in 7and and
half hrs. The interesting thing was that
we got the Darshan of the Goddess at around 5:15 a.m, just 15 minutes before
the closure of the duration of morning Darshan , otherwise we had to wait till
8a.m ! It made us realise that Goddess always had a better plan than ours!
Bhairon Nath is the temple which is situated at a
distance of 2.5 kms from Hooli Cave and it is believed that the yatra of
Vaishnodevi is incomplete without the darshan at Bhairon temple. Due to the
unfortunate event of heavy rainfall and landslide, the route to Bhairon Nath
was made closed. So we had to return
from Vaishnodevi.
The trial of the journey was not over yet. We had to
bear the harshness of the cold weather at the station of Jammu Tawi with 10
hours of waiting for the train. I am happy to state that we could successfully
complete the tests of the journey one after the other, all by the mercy of
Goddess Vaishno Maata.
This is the divine magical power of Vaishnodevi that
attracts 5 million people from different geographical location every year. We
were lucky to have been invited there and we look forward for such adventurous
journey in future!
Jai Maata Di!
Swati Sarangi
16.05.2016
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