hills and spirituality

my fifteen days of travel to jammu and kashmir was both a pleasure trip and a spiritual one.
the first day of landing in jammu, we moved into a small town called a katra, basically this town is a kind of "base camp" for the pilgirms moving to vaishnodevi.

we landed into katra at about 2000 hrs, freshened up and post dinner we moved to the base of the hill from where the walk starts. during dinner(fantastic tasting food, and  none of the hotels in katra use garlic or onions) we were told that no cameras and given a long list of prohibited items...so basically we left everything at katra.

there was some amount of confusion when some of us in the group decided to walk and some decided that they would be carried on palanquin's and some decided to take the horse. we were told that the palanquin's need to be booked in advance. so some of the group moved back to the katra hotel.

the walkers started walking(me being one of them) the horses .. horsed away. the young at heart and the once's who used to exercise moved away quite fast. i was bringing up the rear, huffing and puffing away...this was a 12 km walk on a seriously steep road.(you had the option of taking the stairs!)

the walk was a killer, i tried a small section (looked small when i started off) of the stairs, but they just kept going up and up and up.

the human traffic even at this "ungodly" hour post midnight was a lot. jai mata di were the words of encouragement shouted by the pilgrims moving up or down!

finally we(two of us) reached the half way mark. and we see part of our group relaxing at one of the wayside resting places. we join them...after about an hour of chatting away, we decide to head back. manoj who was keeping me company during the walk up decided to continue along with a few of the group who were resting, they walk up and the rest walk down and this  was a real great walk, the morning light was just breaking. the birds chirping. the early morning sun breaking from behind the clouds..what a sight.