Three girls go to Vaishno Devi

For the younger generation, a journey to meet the Mother Goddess is more than just a pilgrimage when you have the right spirit and the right company

• We were three girls looking for a safe place to go for a short weekend break and never in our initial planning days had we imagined that Vaishno Devi would turn out to be the chosen destination, since none of us was keen on visiting places of pilgrimage. There’s a famous saying that when the Mata, the Goddess, summons a person, the believer has to pay a visit. Going by that, I guess at that point of time the goddess wanted to meet the three of us and hence the thought struck our minds.

  Trains were booked out so we boarded a bus from Red Fort in Old Delhi for Katra, the base camp of this journey. After a journey of almost 15 hours, we arrived in the morning and were thronged by plenty of middlemen who each tried to persuade us to pick their hotel, which was ‘the best’.
  
  

  Bhawan, nestled among the mountains.

  Hungry after an overnight journey, we had our breakfast first and then checked into a newly built hotel offering good rooms at lower rates. A compulsory yatra parchi or entry ticket is needed to begin the journey and is
  Read More »from Three girls go to Vaishno Devi
•