Talking about this journey, after spending a few days in Haridwar, I reach Rudraprayag from Devprayag where I stay for a day to witness the confluence of holy rivers. I have left home with the aim of visiting Rudranath temple. Before reaching Rudranath, I have to reach Gopeshwar where there is an ancient temple dedicated to Hindu God Shiva and an ancient weapon is also kept here which belongs to the 12th century. So let's start today's post.
Gopinath temple, graphic created in adobe photoshop
In Rudraprayag, after bowing in front of the holy confluence of Mandakini and Alaknanda, I take a bus for Gopinath temple. The distance from here to Gopinath temple is 69 km, which the bus takes two and a half hours to cover. The bus stops a lot and wherever it finds a passenger, it immediately applies the brakes. Anyway, after two and a half hours, I am standing at Gopinath bus stand where the height is 1450 meters.
Gopinath Temple is located in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand and Gopeshwar is considered a special temple of Kedarnath and Badrinath Yatra. It is said that after visiting Kedarnath and Badrinath, one must visit Gopinath Temple, and by doing so your journey is considered successful. The attraction of this place is the ancient Gopinath temple present here which was built in the ninth century during the reign of Katyuri dynasty.
This temple is built in Naagar style which was very popular in North India at one time. Many temples are built in Naagar style in Himachal and Uttarakhand. Due to Gopinath temple which is dedicated to Lord Shiva, this place has religious importance and due to this it is very famous. If the traveler visits here, then he can go to visit other religious temples located further from here, these temples are Tungnath and Badrinath.
The dome of the temple is 30 feet high from the sanctum sanctorum and it is said that the Shivlinga located in the temple can be seen from 24 doors. There are many remains of broken idols around the temple which suggest that there were other temples here. According to an ancient legend, when Lord Krishna was performing Raasleela, Lord Shiva took the guise of a Gopi and joined the Raasleela. When Krishna recognized him, this place was named Gopinath.
Now let's talk about the ancient weapon present here which is related to the twelfth century. According to the ancient story, "A demon named Tarakasur was born who created a lot of havoc. No human or god was able to kill him because he had the boon of being killed by Lord Shiva's son. To wake Shiva up from deep meditation so that Lord Shiva could marry Parvati, the gods gave this task to Kamadeva (the god of love and attraction).
When Kamadeva shot the love arrow at Shiva, Shiva's third eye opened, after which in anger Shiva threw his trident at Kamadeva, which reduced Kamadeva to ashes. According to the legend, this trident is the same one that Shiva threw at Kamadeva." This 5 feet long trident is still present in the temple premises, this trident is made of ashtadhatu and it is also believed that this trident has a great power. Whenever someone faces troubles in this world, then God's form will come and he will end the evils by using this weapon.
So this was the ancient story related to this place, when I reached here, the sunset was happening and I was amazed to see the grandeur of this supernatural temple at sunset. I was overwhelmed to see the ancient trident, it was very big and grand. Clicking photos inside the temple was prohibited, so I clicked all the photos only from outside. After visiting the temple, I rented a room in the nearby market where I stayed for 2 days before going to Rudranath temple.
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to tranlate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from Canon 77D (18-55mm), Mobile POCO F1 and edited in Lightroom/photoshop.