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The Vaishnodevi Experience 2023

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.
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Random Thoughts from school


School is a place where kids go to learn. School is also a place where parents get together and discuss the latest happenings. I am rarely part of such discussions, since I can’t talk on anything related to clothes, jewelry, cooking or even the difficulty of finding full time housemaids! However, on my latest visit to the school, I found myself at the centre of a group of women, all talking earnestly about the ‘topic of the season’ – vacations! Almost every family had been out somewhere or the other – while some had simply been visiting their parents and grandparents, there were those like us who had roamed over India, and then there were those who had been to Europe or China. This was probably the only topic which could induce me to listen, and some of these women knew that I wrote a travel blog, so they headed over to share their travel experiences with me.


Much as I enjoy listening to travel stories, there is just so much I can stomach about the difficulty of finding good food (read ‘food tasting like that made at home’) in China, and I was fast losing my patience, and itching to get away. And then one of the women told us how they had lost their travellers cheques and another pitched in with a story of how someone had lost all their money while travelling. Soon, the discussion turned gory and it was amazing to hear how many of these women had relatives or friends who had undergone some terrible experiences due to ill health or theft while abroad! Soon, they seemed to run out of stories, but come to a consensus that those who were carrying travel insurance were the lucky ones. Thankfully, the teacher interrupted us at this point and I didn’t have to hear anything more. However, the talk did make me think about how people going abroad were advised to carry travel insurance. But how many of us would even consider travel insurance while travelling in India. I certainly hadn’t thought about it earlier. Have you?? Have there been any circumstances under which you would have wished you had insured yourself while travelling in India? I haven’t so far, but I would love to hear your thoughts.


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