India Trip: Vaishno Devi

The next morning we woke up early to ride a helicopter up to Vaishno Devi. It was the first time any of us had been in a helicopter! The ride was so much fun, although it only lasted about 2 minutes. It was a strange feeling as you just lifted off the ground and flew up into the mountains. The views from the copter were breathtaking, and I wish we could've flown around a bit more.

When we reached the helipad on the top we then began a 2 km hike to the main temple. Many people walk up to the temple from the town below, but we had heard that security can be difficult for foreigners to pass through, so we decided to go the helicopter route. The hike there was the first walkway the cleanest I've seen in India! All along the walk we saw horses and other pilgrims pass by saying, "Jai Mata Di", as they passed.

At the temple we had to remove our shoes and walk on some freezing concrete sidewalks to the main shrine. The primary attraction here was a series of three rocks called Holy Pindies. These rocks are located deep inside cave which you had to crawl through a small tunnel to get through. It was pretty fun to crawl along the cave tunnel, for much of the crawl your feet were immersed in some ice cold water running below you. Then you arrive at the shrine, are blessed by a priest, and get about 30 seconds to look at the rocks before being hurried on. Apprentely the priests were curious to know where I'm from, since I definitely didn't fit in with the rest of the pilgrims, but I didn't understand him, and thought he wanted me to hurry up so I hurried by the whole thing.

Afterwards we retrieved our shoes, and went back to the helipad for our flight down. That afternoon we spent shopping around the town and relaxing in the hotel. Then we flew back to Delhi the next day and back to the US the day after.