Chardham Yatra - Part 10 (Sitapur to Pipalkoti)

Day 9 (27^th May 2019) – We were woken up early as always at 5 a.m. by the morning coffee call of Ranveer. By 6 a.m. we were packed, loaded and ready to leave. Kedarnath will always be etched in our memory as one of the eventful visits. The miracle we witnessed which enabled our darshan of the Lord, the multiple darshan and the wonderful temple of Triyugi Narayan were simply wonderful and memorable.

Although we were ready early, there was already a traffic jam right outside our hotel on the way out of Sitapur. After a wait of 15 minutes or so, we joined the traffic. The movement was slow till we covered approximately 6 kilometre or so. Then the roads cleared, and we could move smoothly. Our first halt was at Gupt Kashi – the place where Lord Shiva is believed to have proposed to Devi Parvati after being pleased by Her penance. This is also the location where Lord Shiva is believed to have gone incognito when the Pandavas were searching for Him to seek His pardon for the sin of Brahamanahatya & Banduhatya (Killing of Brahmin & relatives).

The temple at Gupt Kashi can be reached by walking up a few hundred steps from the main road. There are also services of local jeeps who charge Rs. 20 per head for the short one-kilometre trip through narrow roads. Due to paucity of time, we opted for the jeep. All 10 of us could squeeze in one jeep. Within 5 minutes or so we were in the temple. In the temple, one can see two spouts of water flowing – one believed to be Ganga and the other Yamuna. We washed our feet, hands and faces at both spouts. Even though we had decided not to do any puja here (due to shortage of time), we still went ahead and did a small puja conducted by a local priest. Here we also made offerings to our departed ancestors. One unique custom here is that our offering to the priest is done secretively – He make a small cut a dried whole coconut and then we are asked to put our offerings inside it and then covered with the coconut piece. The puja was conducted in the temple courtyard.

After this we went for darshan of Lord Vishwanath inside the temple. We also had darshan of the Ardanareeshwara idol in the adjacent temple. After this, we took the same jeep to return to our TT which was waiting for us at the main road.

We then resumed our journey towards Badrinath. After a short while we halted for our breakfast at a roadside eatery. Ranveer had made dosas with chutney. Although cold, it was delicious, and we wolfed down a good number of soft dosas. The journey was long and felt very warm after the cold climate we had experienced in the earlier day. The original plan was to reach Badrinath on the same day but due to traffic and the extra time taken at Gupt Kashi we were making slow progress.

Along the way, we stopped at another eatery for our lunch break. This was in a small village on the way. The menu for lunch was rice, sambhar and cabbage sabzi plus curds and pickles. We also bought some sweets from the shop and that became our desert. We also found a dog there to whom we gave buns bought at the same shop. After eating two, the dog refused to have any more. There were some medical shops in the village where we made some emergency purchases.

As we were running behind schedule, our tour operator decided to halt a town called Pipalkoti. This is about 35 kms before Joshimatt. We were apprehensive about the quality of the hotel & rooms here but were pleasantly surprised to get a very nice hotel. The location of our hotel was excellent – we were in between several large mountains and the view was terrific. Although it was warm here, there was also a strong breeze flowing – so strong that it was pushing the plastic chairs which were in the lobby. The rooms were large and had TV with few channels working. We also had large & clean bathrooms where we could wash our clothes. As the room was large, we could tie our clothesline in the room and as the weather was warm, the clothes got dried by morning. We had a dinner by about 8 p.m. – Dinner comprised of Tawa parathas and a mixed sabzi followed by rice, curds and pickles. After this, we went for a walk in the small town and had a nice glass of hot milk at a nearby restaurant.

The hot milk made us sleepy and we went to sleep by 10 p.m. eagerly anticipating our visit to Holy Badrinath the next day.

Thus, ended Day 9 of our Yatra.