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.
Over the last couple of months , I have been writing about our first foray to the east in December 2014, and most of my posts have been about our trip to Sikkim. These posts have generated quite a bit of interest, and I have been flooded with questions about it, which is why I have decided to write this post as a compilation of my experience there, as well as answers to lots of questions I have been asked.