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.
It’s been a while since I wrote my last post, and I have loads and loads of stuff to put up! So many things have come up recently, including an interesting freelance assignment that I shall write about soon! Meanwhile, I just hope I don’t forget all the interesting things I want to tell you before I get time to write them down! Getting back to the last weekend, here is the second part of the series – our Sunday adventure. As I mentioned in the first part, we had returned late on Saturday, with no energy left to make plans for the Sunday birding programme…. To continue….. I was doubtful about going for the birding at Nerul the next morning, but when the alarm went off, I was pleasantly surprised to see Samhith wake up enthusiastically. When I asked him if he really wanted to get up so early on a Sunday, and also reminded him that on no account could he miss school on Monday, he said, “But Amma, Aadesh uncle said this was the last chance to see the water birds…… we have to wait an