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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 - Somnath

March brought us a bonus week of travel. And it also brought me a new camera!! Of course, I went click happy on the trip, and came back with loads and loads of photos. This one happens to be one of my favourites...





This is the Somnath Temple in Gujarat..... one of the 12 Jyotirlings, a temple built and re-built again and again and again. I wrote a story for the Club Mahindra Blog on the temple. To read the story, click here.

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Location: Somnath, Gujarat, India

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