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.
Its always fun to get a book as a gift, and it becomes a lot more fun when you get a book from someone you don't know! When I signed up for the' Perfect Picture Books by Post ' swap on Playing by the Book , both Samhith and I were excited about the whole process, and we sent off our book, waiting eagerly to see which book we would receive! We got our book yesterday , and I waited eagerly for Samhith to return home from school before opening it. Here is what we received.... We both love reading Eric Carle , and have a couple of his books, but thankfully, this one we dont have! Samhith opened the book and went through them eagerly, seeing the pictures more closely than the numbers themselves. We both loved the mouse seen in every pic, but he was intrigued by the sketches of the train and its coaches, especially those on each page. As to the book itself, he decided that counting from 1 to 10 was too tame for him, so he decided to first count all the animals, and then