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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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Faces in the Crowd - Children at Work

We saw these boys on the way to Wayanad, but this scene could have been anywhere in India.



Two boys, hard at work, cleaning a pump, outside a garage. Its always sad to see young children in rags, working, at an age when they should be at school, or playing. Its worse when they are right outside a college, to which, in all possibility, people pay lakhs to get their kids into, and then the said kids waste away their time learning little if nothing, throwing away their parents' hard earned money in frivolous pursuits. Could there be a higher contrast?

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Comments

  1. IndraniSeptember 15, 2013 at 1:09 PM

    Hmmm... tough life!
    Nicely framed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MridulaSeptember 15, 2013 at 2:14 PM

    Life anywhere you go it roughly remains the same :(

    ReplyDelete
  3. kebhariSeptember 16, 2013 at 2:18 PM

    Children worked life is very dangerous.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ChitraxeeSeptember 16, 2013 at 2:57 PM

    We invite you to Aviva's #BloggerContest. To read our T&C and participate, click on http://bit.ly/134qouZ !

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nomad Travel InsuranceSeptember 17, 2013 at 9:59 AM

    Thanks for sharing your one of a kind adventure. :)

    ReplyDelete

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