Positive beginning - Jai Amarnath

American Airlines was excellent this time. Jet Airways was so-so. Had wonderful time with Priya and family. We visited Hanuman, Rajarajeswari and Shiridi Sai Temples those 3 days. Also, went to the beach. Received by Nirmala in Tirupati as usual. Happy to see each other again. Visited my two sisters and really great rapport. Made a few phone calls and sent mail to some - those that communicated with me.
Today, the yatra begins. We are leaving by train from Chennai to Delhi. Meeting Bhuvana and her brother on the train. Very excited about Bhuvana's company. We reach Jammu on July 5th morning. From then, may not check mail till the 15th. Our helicopter tour is on the 7th.

I will write the details after my return. Unlike last trip, this time, it sounds very positive. Nirmala was slightly sick, but she is doing good today. The heatwave was the reason.

Will talk to you all later.

Random thought - Shakthi Peetham

I was talking to a friend today about the Shakti Peetham in Kashmir. We both are going to be in Kashmir this summer and we all want to see this Temple. I did some research and sent her the links. Then suddenly I remembered another Temple. I don't recall posting about it in my blog. So, just thought that I should post the following information that I gathered long time ago. If any of my readers are interested, they can include it in their plan. 

Here it is:


Regarding the temple of Shrinkhala devi near calcutta: 
It is said to be situated as you said in Hugli district in a place by called Pandua.


Shrinkhala devi was supposed to be in the past.
At present there is no temple in the place, a minar was built there by muslim invaders and at present the place is under the protection of Archeological society of India, the doors were locked and we came to know that entry was banned into the temple for security reasons.  
There were ruins of temple in front of minar.
Another supportive evidence about the temple was obtained when we enrquired local residents, Every year during magha maasa (Around February) a festival by name MELA TAALA of about 30 days duration is celebrated in the premises of the minar which is attended by local hindu and muslim communities in large numbers (More than 1 lakh). It is one of the important celebration of that place. 
Another interesting fact is that near to Pandua there is a temple of Hanseswari mata which is regarded as Shakti peetham.

Taking into consideration all the above facts observed and collected it could be a possibility that it was the place where there was Shrinkhala devi temple.

About Indian Railways

Now you all know that we are aiming at Amarnath darsan next month. July 7th was chosen by Shangloo travels, per our schedule. Hope we are successful this time. In this process, I tried to understand the Indian Railways terminology. While searching for all kinds of information, I came across the following link and it is wonderfully useful, may be a bit old, but not outdated.
Click here.

Since I found it on google search, I guess it is ok to use that link here.

Check these out - interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_India#Jesus_in_India

http://mukti4u2.dk/Srinagar_Shankaracharya_Temple.htm

I forgot to write about the Shankaracharya Temple in Srinagar which just the three of us Myself, Rao and Nirmala visited (I mean the rest of the group did not join us). It was 400 plus steps, but I slowly managed to climb and it was worth the strain. The Temple is charged with divine energy. Now that I found these links, we can see all the details.

This was added to my Vaishnodevi adventure post

I almost forgot that I did not complete posting the rest of the saga. Today is May 17th, 2011 and one of my readers (a new addition as a reader) who is like my own daughter asked me "how did you unite with the others afterwards?" 

Now I will write whatever I can recall.

We woke up in the morning, had a bath in the attached tiny bathroom. The hotel waiter brought us a bucket of hot water. W came back and sat in the front room of the booking office. All the autowalas started coming one by one. They were all looking at us. Each and everyone was whole heartedly sorry for us. Around 8 a.m., an auto arrived. We saw my husband Rao, our (useless) guide Anbu and another friend from the group Shankara Narayana (who adopted me as his sister). I ran and hugged Rao. Shankara Narayana and Rao hugged both of us. We never hugged anyone like that. I started sobbing. Anbu looked very compassionate at that time. He was equally worried for the two of us. He immediately went into my good books. They told us how they spent a sleepless night worrying about us and so on. Rao also had a small adventure. He trekked down all by himself without shoes. Someone stole his brand new walking shoes. When he came down, he also forgot the name of our hotel. By 10 p.m. he somehow located it with a land mark. 

All the autorickshaw drivers were watching us like they did a happy ending of a movie.

Suddenly I remembered the driver who drove us around the previous night. He was parked at a distane and when I asked them, they unanimously declared that he was the one. I walked over, gave him 500 rupees (that I took from the 'brother') and thanked him. We reached the hotel.

Yatra 2011

I can't believe that I decided to this one more time. This time I hope to blog better. My children Gopal and Gayatri have been providing me with the tools and examples from other bloggers. But, I haven't paid much attention to their advice. Now, Gayatri gifted me with a book. 'Globejotting" by Dave Fox. Gopal in the past provided me with links on how to let the world know about my travel journals. I wish to use both of these this time. I would like to receive comments and advices from my readers. Any comment is accepted - no hard feelings. Our next yatra is in very initial stages of planning. We should finalize this week and the whole world will know. Two more people are asking to join us if we went to Amarnath. And we are focusing on that only, anyway.

About the actual yatra, in my next post.

Thoughts about next yatra

Now that the snow has melted and spring is nearing, we are thinking of completing our Amarnath yatra. No travel group is willing to arrange just Amarnath. They want us to pay for the whole package, which is a waste of lot of money for us. Moreover. I have several medical checkups in April and on May 10th my Cardiologist has to give me permission to go to that altitude. Based on that only I cant even buy my ticket to India.
If there are any readers of my blog who had travelled on their own and made this yatra, please make a comment and let us know how to go about it. We can communicate with e-mail. The only information I have is that the darsan dates begin on June 29, 2011. I checked with Southern travels and they give discount only for accommodation. We have to pay for all transportation charges in the package even though we join them for only Amarnath. They were very prompt in replying which I appreciated very much.