Hitchhiker’s Guide to Badrinath
Details of Badrinath:
Badrinath is a very important Hindu pilgrimage destination , as it is one of the four ‘Char Dhams’ and ‘Chota Char Dhams’ pilgrimage sites. The temple is also one of the 108 Divya Desams dedicated to Vishnu, holy shrines for Vaishnavites.The image of the presiding deity worshipped in the temple is a 1m (3.3 ft) tall, the black stone statue of Vishnu in the form of Badrinarayan. The statue is considered by many Hindus to be one of eight swayam vyakta kshetras, or self-manifested statues of Vishnu.
The Badrinath is located in Garhwal hill tracks in Chamoli district along the banks of Alaknanda River.It is open for six months every year (between the end of April and the beginning of November), because of extreme weather conditions in the Himalayan region.When Badrinath temple remain closed during winter every year, one idol of Lord Badri is brought to Narsinh temple in Joshimath (which is around 50kms from Badrinath) and worshiped there for six months. Although Badrinath is located in North India, the head priest or Rawal, is traditionally a Nambudiri Brahmin chosen from the South Indian state of Kerala.
Travelogue:
Day 3 Started with early morning bus from Gangotri to Uttarkashi . After a quick fresh up and breakfast ,we checked out of the room. Incase anyone is planning for Yamunotri , they need to take a bus to Yamunotri from here but as I am not sure the time is sufficient I planned to skip it and decided to directly go to Badrinath .As there were no direct buses from there, we took a bus from there to Chamba. On the way we had 2 small (15mins) breaks to our journey due to land slides .
From there, we took another bus to Srinagar. On the way to Srinagar we had glimpses of the Tehri which has the hydro power plant from which Uttarakhand gets its major power supply. Apart from that Tehri is also one of the major tourist destination for adventure sports enthusiasts. We reached Srinagar around 7 p.m. It is generally the break point for both Badrinath and Kedarnath as you will get frequent transport from here to there. We took the night break in a Gurudwara there, with the guidance from the friend from Punjab .
Day 4, We started journey to Badrinath around 9:30 a.m, after usual morning stuff. It’s almost 8 hours journey to reach Badrinath from there. The route is very scenic and goes through many famous places like Rudra Prayag, Chamoli, Joshimath etc. We reached Badrinath around 6 p.m. and checked into the hotel room for the night.
After that we went to the Tapt Kund, a group of hot springs just below the temple, to take bath. These are considered to be medicinal and pilgrims generally take bath here before the Darshan.
Taking bath in a hot water spring ,especially with the weather out there, so cold is a nice experience. After that We had the darshan at the temple. After the dinner we retired to bed.
Vlog:
We spent that night at a height of 3,133 m (10,279 ft) with temperature -2° . due to which again I was having a little bit of headache and lack of sleep.
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