Kartikeya Swami Temple
So as I told you in yesterday's post that we stayed in Srinagar to spend the night. This Srinagar is the one in Pauri Garhwal, Uttrakhand, not the one in Kashmir.
Kamleshwar Mahadev Temple
In the morning we got up comfortably and went to a temple located in Srinagar named Kamleshwar Mahadev Temple. Here Lord Vishnu had praised Lord Shiva. And he received Sudarshan Chakra as a blessing.
Kamleshwar Mahadev Temple
From here we moved ahead and had breakfast at Jai Narsingh Dhaba. For breakfast we had Aloo Paratha and tea. Aloo Paratha is my favorite breakfast and I can eat it every day. The dhaba was in a very beautiful place, here is the Alaknanda river. There is a different fun in having breakfast sitting on the banks of the river.
From here onwards we came across the Dhari Devi temple, which is dedicated to Dhari Devi (a form of Goddess Kali), who is considered as the goddess of Uttarakhand. I have passed through this route many times but never stopped to visit the temple because most of the time I go by bus from here and the bus does not stop and wait here. From this it is understood that since we came on our scooter, we did this journey according to our convenience. Dhari Devi Temple is 14 kms from Srinagar.
Dhari Devi
This temple is in the Alaknanda river. We parked our scooter in the parking lot and went to visit the temple. The temple is in the middle of the river, we sat in the temple for a while and left from there for our further journey.
Dhari Devi
Today we had planned to visit Kartik Swami Temple which is 70 kms from Srinagar. We reached the main area Kanakchari in about 3 hours and parked the scooter here. The forest department people gave us a ticket for the trek to Kartik Swami Temple. A person has to pay Rs. 100 to go on the trek.
The trek to Kartikeya Swamy temple is about 2.7 kms, 10006 ft. Light snow was still visible on the way which had fallen last night and was melting with the rays of the sun. I was very excited because there is a different kind of fun in seeing the views after reaching the peak of the mountain. All the tiredness of trekking goes away in a minute and then everything looks very pleasant and peaceful.
On the way we took a lot of photos, we also met many people who were stopping to enjoy the snow. The more we were climbing the mountain, the closer we were getting to the temple and the views were getting more interesting. Finally we reached the temple. We had darshan in the temple, did puja and offered coconut. Since I was very hungry, I ate the prasad sitting there itself. The sun was about to set and everyone was coming down from the trek.
After getting down, we had tea and Maggi which gave us a lot of energy and decided that we should leave from here. Although it was dark, the locals told us that the road ahead was safe and we could go ahead till Banswara which was about 80 kms from here, and it took us about 4 hours to reach there. I always fear tigers while travelling at night. In my childhood, I have seen tigers from very close many times which used to come to villages to hunt animals.
This post is written in Hindi using Google Transliterator, all the photos are taken from my phone OnePlus, and the thumbnail is made in Photoshop.
[//]:# (!worldmappin 30.34285 lat 79.05252 long Wheels on the Himalayas : Kartikeya Swami Temple (10006 ft)- Part II d3scr)