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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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Memories of 2012 - Sewri, Mumbai

April also saw us make a visit to Sewri to see the flamingoes....



It is amazing to see the variety of birds that come to this concrete jungle, year after year. The numbers have declined over the years, but at least we still get to see them. It remains to us, however, to decide if we want the birds to keep coming back, for our children to watch with as much enjoyment as we do.


On another note, a lone fisherman with his bag of crabs was even more interesting to Samhith than the flamingoes. After all, the birds were far away, and the crabs were really huge!

You can read the following posts to know more about the birds we saw at Sewri:


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Location: Sewri East, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

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