My first trip to Vaishnodevi was unimpressive. Climbing was hard, and it only served to highlight how badly out of shape I was, while my in-laws managed to cope so much better. Further, I hadn’t quite realized that the cave experience wouldn’t be the same as I had imagined, since the original cave was only opened at certain times a year, and that we only entered a newly created tunnel, one far easier to access, and hence more manageable with the crowds that thronged the mountain shrine. The resulting experience at the shrine, for barely a fraction of a second, hardly compared to what I had expected / imagined / heard about. So, for me, Vaishnodevi was like any other temple, nothing to write home about, something that was reflected (though not explicitly mentioned) in the blog post I wrote then.
Long long ago , during the great deluge, Brahma collected all the seeds of creation in a pot of nectar, which floated down the water, and finally came to rest at one place. The story goes on, with Siva appearing as Kiratamurthy (hunter) along with his wife Parvati, and shattering the pot with his arrow. The nectar spilled over, creating a pool, and the broken pot took the form of a Shiva lingam. Since the lingam originated from a pot (Kumbham), and was the fist form taken at the beginning of creation, this lingam came to be known as Adi Kumbheswarar and this place is known as Kumbakonam (Kumbham = pot, and Konam = crooked, for the pot broke crookedly). The pool formed by the nectar is the holy Mahamagham tank, where, it is believed, the nine holy rivers come to take a bath and purify themselves once every 12 years. This is celebrated on a grand scale, and thousands and thousands of devotees arrive here to have a dip in this sacred pond on that day. For a small city , Kumbakonam has an