Road Trip to Badrinath

Badrinath is the most important of the four sites in India's Char Dham pilgrimage so after getting married recently and stepping into a new phase of life me and my hubby thought of taking blessings of lord Vishnu and we planned taking down trip to Badrinath in the month of July..
Apart from visiting Badrinath temple other main attractions were the scenic beauty – flowing Ganga river, beautiful mountains, greenery around, only a few kilometers from the Indo-China (Tibet) border and of course the narrow roads going towards Badrinath.
Although we were advised by lot of people not to go by road but we had our new car craze so had made up our mind to zip in our car to Badrinath.

Started at 10pm at night from our home from New Delhi along with one of our college friend, basically to avoid the jam on road, little did we know that we would after 2 hours would be stuck in heavy jam,for a second we thought should we return back?seeing the plight of traffic but then thought lets not deter ourselves from going ahead and we patiently moved on at a snails pace.We halted at Haridwar next day at 6:00am to have our breakfast. Still remember the water was ice cold and it just numbed my feet as soon as I dipped in the water.

After a halt of an hour we continued our journey towards Badrinath.After a couple of hours we started hitting the foot hills of Himalayas and slowly started climbing the mountains and then it seemed that we were crossing a chain of mountains. It went like up and down one mountain to other. As we started going high up the sea level we started feeling slight nip in the air and our semi woolens were on. It was definitely a respite from the typical Delhi weather which is hot and humid.

We halted at a tea stall sipped cup of tea and then moved ahead towards Devprayag.
As we were nearing towards Srinagar things got scary, roads narrowed down, saw a couple of accidents and one just in front of our eyes, a car moving ahead lost balance post hitting one of the big rocks on the road and it turned upside down, it bought shivers down my spine and thats when we realized that now moving ahead towards Joshimat wouldn’t be that easy as roads suddenly started getting worse.
We finally hit Karanprayag at 5pm, totally fagged out , had a quick bite in a resort and all of us crashed out on our beds .We woke up at 9pm at night to have dinner and saw that it was pouring heavily outside. We had a good bathe in the rain on the resort’s terrace enjoying every drop of it, drenched badly
We could hear that typically forest noise which comes, a faint sound of water flowing down the river, while describing this I feel as if I am currently reliving the moment.

Had our dinner and next day started our journey towards Badrinath at 7am.We reached our destination at 12 noon and were lucky enough to be a part of the arti that takes place at Badrinath temple. After offering prayer all 3 of us then explored the place, we went to Mana village, a tiny village near Badrinath is located just few meters inside the Indo-Tibet border in the Himalayas. This village, referred to as the last village of India on the Indo-Tibet border, has been designated as a ‘tourism village’ by the Uttarakhand government.
With 10,248 ft above sea, Mana village holds a lot of mythological relevance and we can actually see traces of the Mahabharata scattered across this small village. Veda Vyas Guha where Veda Vyasa resided and composed the whole Mahabharata and Ganesha Guha where Lord Ganesh wrote the Mahabharata as dictated by Veda Vyasa, are some of the attractions here.

Another interesting must-see is Bhim pul, a huge rock formed as a bridge across river Saraswati. Legend has it that when Pandavas were crossing this river on their ‘swargarohana’, Draupadi was panic-stricken. Bhim then lifted a huge rock and placed it over the river to form a natural bridge, thereby making it easy for her to cross the river.
After climbing about a thousand odd steps — the air becomes more rarified and it is difficult to breath — we reached the top of the hill at Mana. There a board announcing ‘India’s last tea shop’, stands distinctly with a neat crowd of tourists mingling about. Chand, the owner of hotel, welcomes you with smile and a cup of tea.

“Take this tulsi tea. In the Himalayas tulsi is available in plenty,” he says. While drinking the tea, you can have a view of border road on the one side and Himalayas on the other side. From here, there is no other way to go! Spending sometime there we came back to our resort and retired to bed early.

Next day morning we took a timber trail to Auli – Ski resort, had a great time there, did rope climbing, quite an adventurous hour I remember. In the afternoon we started back from Badrinath and again broke our journey at Devprayag because of time constraint as after 8:00pm the road barricade are put to avoid the tourist to travel during night for safety reasons. After having sumptuous food in a resort we went and took rest until 6:00am in the morning and started our journey back to Delhi. Passing by the steep rocky roads safely was a task to overcome, finally after a couple of hours we took a halt in Rishikesh had breakfast and moved on to our route to Delhi.

In a nutshell the trip was a rocky experience full of fun, adventure, thrill, scary at times

This particular road trip will always be etched in my memory forever.