Amritsar-Vaishno Devi--DAY 3 and DAY 4

SATURDAY, 04-04-09 and SUNDAY, 05-04-09

"Impossible!!! How can be their seat numbers same as ours? Check their journey date", replied an agitated Sandy. True he was. The people who were thinking berth nos. 1,2 and 3 as theirs, didn't notice that theirs were a previous day's ticket. Happened due to confusion of departure time. After the T.T. cleared their doubts, another family took their seats in front of ours. Chalo, problem solved. Now sleeping time. But no. God did not allow me and Dipak to sleep. The family in front of us were constantly chatting at high pitched voices the whole night. Great! What a way to start the journey! Anyways. At around 4:00 in the morning did we get some sleep. The train reached Jammu Tawi station at around 7:00 AM. The station had not changed in terms of cleanliness. We came out of the station and got into line to book bus tickets to Katra. Sandy suggested that I look for private buses too. They would hardly charge 10 to 20 bucks extra. Right he was. We got into a private bus at Rs.60 each. But we did not get any seats to sit. Instead, we were asked to sit on upturned coke crates, with cushion on top as the consolation. This way we started our 2 hr journey to Katra.

In between, when the conductor was collecting the money for the ticket, a few people fought with him regarding miscommunication with ticket fares. As a result around 10 people got down. So we got lucky and took the vacant seats. But eventually, after 5 mins they returned as a result of settlement between them and the conductor. As soon as they arrived, they started demanding their seats back. I had an 1/2 hr long verbal fight with 3 of them which resulted in my partial-victory. Why partial? Bcoz, as soon as I stepped down the bus, when it took a break from the journey, my seat was taken by one of the idiots. I thought what kind of shit head people you have to come across. Anyways, we reached Katra by noon. There, though my eyes were searching a hotel, a guy was pestering us to go to his Dharamshala and I had listen to him unwillingly. Sandy asked him about the fare. He said no charge. Sandy asked him to show the rooms. We followed him to a narrow lane, and when we reached the Dharamshala, the truth came forward. We would only freshen up before the ascend to the temple. Before leaving, we need to keep our luggage in their cloak room and have to surrender the room. Though they were not charging for the room, we will have to buy the Prasad from their stall. And if we wanted to keep the room booked, we would need to pay 300 bucks for a night. So this was the case.

After freshening up and reluctantly buying prasad from the dharmashala, we had our brunch in a nearby cafe. After that, when Sandy had gone to get passes for entrance, me and Dipak were discussing about returning in Helicopter. But since we didn't have that much of money, so we scraped off the idea. After some more purchases, we finally started our ascend. Though Sandy showed a lot of enthusiasm at start, eventually he had mellowed down and we took a lot of stoppages in between. During those periods, we bought water ad eatables, munching on each and everything we found on our way. Since the whole ascend was of 14 kms and technically it should take us 5 hrs to reach the top, we had taken 7 hrs bcoz of our long stoppages and also bcoz we were not in a hurry to reach there. Interesting things that happened in between -

• Munched a lot of things
• Drank around 3 ltrs of water and 1 ltrs of soft-drinks each
• Took a lot of snaps
• Came across a very nice girl whom we named a Miss Cyber-Shot, bcoz she had one. I think she was from Delhi. Should have taken a snap of hers too.
• A monkey attacked Dipak's Prasad packet. Took away some of it. Dipak consoled himself saying "Hanumaan Ji le gaye. Accha hai"
• Ate the worst jalebis you can ever get.
• Met Miss Cyber-Shot a lot of times. SHIT! Got infatuated with her
• Met a person walking all the way from Haridwar to Vaishno Devi.

After we reached Bhawan(the entrance to Vaishno Devi), saw huge rush. Though people were being given batch numbers for darshan, it didn't matter how you went inside. We could not take anything, apart from prasad, inside. So had to get into line for lockers. But the person at the counter said, unless others who have already taken lockers, return from darshan and return the key, we could not get any. So I asked Sandy to search other places for lockers while I waited in this line. Luckily he got one and we went to keep our belongings in that locker. Before moving for darshan, we had our dinner, which was quite tasty. But now came the most difficult part-the darshan. though our line moved very swiftly, we were literally pushed inside the temple, so Dipak and I could not have a glimpse of the deity. Anyways, we roamed around the premises, though we were not satisfied with our darshan. After taking our belongings, and a cup of coffee, we moved on the trail to Bhairon Baba Temple. Sandy and Dipak took the roads, while I took the stairs. I felt disgusted seeing the half-breed ponies shitting all around the place(those who do not know, ponies are used in the whole area to carry old and tired people while ascending and descending). After Bhairon Baba's darshan and some nice snaps, we started our descend through some dim-lit trails. In between, we made a few stoppages for ice-creams and coffee, that too around 2:00 in the morning.

After we descended, we hurried to get our luggage from the dharamshala cloak room, and I became desperate to find a hotel bcoz it was already 6:00 in the morning, and I was feeling so sleepy that it was difficult to keep my eyes open. We again went on our negotiation skills, and took a room at Rs.600 in a pretty decent hotel. We were supposed to check out at 2:00 PM(instead of normal check out time of 12 PM which we got changed as a request). But we got up late and hence and checked out a little later than 2 PM. After checking out, we again had our brunch and finally looked for a cab to Jammu city. Here, too, we had an altercation with a family, who finally decided not to travel with us. While returning to Jammu City, we caught a glimpse of a scene of accident, where a bike was lying on the road, with 2 smashed helmets, one bag and a shoe but no blood. GOSH!

We returned to Jammu bus stand at around 4:30 in the evening, from where we took an auto to the railway station. There, we spent a long time watching the crowd come and go. We saw a lot of jawans in Jammu Tawi station, as a part of beefed up security. Our train was at 8 in the evening, so we had our dinner quite early just outside the station. After getting our luggage checked through the new X-ray machines installed in the station, we reached the designated platform waiting for the train. It was a nice train, the newer ones where you have three berths on the aisle side too. We chatted for a while in the train while it was moving towards New Delhi. Eventually everyone went into deep state of slumber, before our eyes opened to the sights of New Delhi station the next morning.