Hotel Devi Grand Katra

... checking of my hand luggage before going to identify my bag before it was put on the plane!
Boarded the plane and sat next to a tall guy who was clearly nervous about flying. The flight was first stopping at Jammu and then flying on to Chandigarh.
About 45mins after take off I stepped out into a hot Jammu airfield. Came out of the airport after collecting my luggage and managed to withdrawer some cash from the ATM. Great.
Caught a cab to the Raghunath temple. Ashraf ...

... 550-700 Rupees (11-14sfr) car les travailleurs indiens rentrent chez eux après avoir travaillé la saison à Sringar. Nous optons pour moins cher et prenons le bus pour 300 Rupees (6sfr). Les sièges étaient déjà toutes prises…on nous indiquait une banquette surélevée…vous vous imaginez le reste. 12h de bus sur 3m2, une hauteur ne permettant pas de rester assis droit. Après un certain temps, on ne sait plus comment s’assoir, puis ...

... br> Then a miracle happened, we had Bulbul in our group and she has an army background. She made few calls and in a matter of 4 hours we had 6 VIP passes which is issued only to army. So finally we started our climb at 11:30am with the sun blazing on our head. At 5:30pm we reached the Temple and because we had VIP passes we got direct entry to the temple. After that we climbed another 2km to reach Bharavnath Mandir. At 5200 feets you can not even see the ...

The first surprise for us one the day from Katra to Srinagar was "Patni Top". This is a small and very veautiful hill station in Udhampur district. It is located in the shiwalik belt of the Himalayas, the River Chenab flows in close proximity to this location. Patan da Talab ,meaning "Pond of the Princess" . The Britishers probably couldnt get the name correctly and over the years it changed from "Patan Da Talab" to "Patni ...

... sight of ice mountains.
Then there is a big tunnel of aroung 3 km which is the boundry line between Jammu and Srinagar. This tunnel is one way and is the lognest one. Security is provided from both the sides of the tunnel. The tunnel is closed everyday in the evening.

Then there is one more tunnel near to Srinagar "green tunnel". This is with the trees. Big trees from both sides are so close and they appear as if it is a tunnel.

We reached our hotel in Srinagar around 8.30 pm

We (Shrikant, Laxmi, Tanish, Sandeep and me) started our journey from Pune. Pune to Delhi and Delhi to jammu was good journey. At the Jammu station car was waiting for us to take to Katra.

Katra is the place where you will have to stay if you wish to go to Vaishno devi temple.
We started around 10.30 am after breakfast as we already booked the tickets for helicopter.
This was the most memorable experience for ...

... it home. On the short drive to the hotel we made "Important Discovery number 2"-all cars in Delhi have battle scars on their sides, indicating that they have had scrapes with other cars. We arrived intact at the "Shanti Palace" hotel after "white knuckling" the last mile as the driver went full speed against traffic on a 1 way street, honking full blast at the other drivers, who in turn, were honking at us. For those of you ...

Its believed that you should get a call from the Divine Godess, and only then you get to visit the shrine of Vaishnodevi. Well, I dont know how true it is , but we three ladies were really fortunate enough that we could visit this most revered temple of Northern India, with much ease.We were told that it takes nothing less than three to seven hours of wait in the queue on normal non rush days, before one is allowed to enter the ...

... ts. Mr. Butt took us to his office *nd showed us the guestbook we would sign when we would le*ve, *nd we noticed on his desk m*ny pictures of celebrities. We *sked him who they *ll where *nd he s*id th*t they h*d *ll st*yed in the housebo*ts. He h*d *lbums full of pictures *nd th*nk you letters; we h*d no ide* th*t this w*s such * f*mous pl*ce. Some celebrities who h*d st*yed there *re Nelson Rockefeller, Peter Jennings *nd even George H ...

... putting his wifes charred remains into the river. The wood fires in the ghats don't fully burn the bodies so it's not just ashes that are scattered but burned bones and full torsos. Apparently there are 5 categories of living thing that aren't cremated: children, lepers, animals, pregnant women, and priests (brahmans). These are regarded as holy, they are put straight into the river without cremation. We saw a couple of corpses floating down the ...