Beautiful Garhwal - The valley of flowers

This has been one of the most memorable trips of my lifetime. This trip was in August, 2002, a bit mistimed i.e. one month later than the usual time at which the flowers bloom in the valley of flowers. But, I would still say that the trip was awesome and truely incredible.
The base camp for this trip was haridwar. For those who are unaware of the place, its a holy city at the foothills of The Himalyas in Uttarakhand (India). Haridwar's literal translation is God's gate (Hari=God , dwar=gate). This along with Rishikesh form a very fine pilgrimage location. The first and the last days of our trip were spent going around the temples and ghats of haridwar.
From haridwar we got an early morning bus to Joshimath. This jaunt took us in the middle of the mountains. Joshimath is a small but beautiful city which usually serves as a fallback point for all the trips to the mountains from this location. Hotels/lodges are available here at very cheap rates and the locals are very friendly. Joshimath has one of the india's highest ropeways. Using the ropeway you can reach auligram within 2o minutes. From auli, you can see a beautiful view of numerous mountan peeks. A beautiful deodar forest on one side and the snow clad mountain peeks on the other give a very peaceful atmosphere to relax.

Now for the most important location of all, the valley of flowers, you need to get to govindgram, from where there is a treck for about 12 1/2 kms uphill. Its not one of those rockclimbing adventures, but a simple walk uphill for that distance was not so easy for us. For the weak-willed, options are available to carry their baggage or them on a pony. but I suggest use ur legs if you want to enjoy the journey. This treck will lead you to govindgram. Now this place is at the mouth of the valley of flowers. A few hotels are there in govindgram. Since govindgram is close to the famous sikh pilgrimage location, hemkund sahibji, we do have a gurudwara in Govindgram. We stayed in the hotel for the night and went out to explore the valley in the morning. Turned out to be a good choice. We had ample time to see the variety of the flowers there. As I already told you, that we were late some of the flowers had already withered away , but the remaining ones were also much more stunning than we had expected. Sometimes the glaciers break from the mountains and come downstream the river that flows in the valley. We were lucky as we had one when we went there. It was an awesome feeling to walk and play snowball on that glacier. :)
The whole valley is about 3 kms long. we can go furthur but then that involves some vigourous trekking. We came to know that indian troops do about 13 days of trekking to reach china border from there.
Then we came back to Joshimath from where we went to badrinath (Lord Vishnu) Temple. Its again one very holy shrine. There are hot water geysers around this temple.
There are a few more places around the temple to visit like the saraswati river and ganesh and vyas cave. From here we took a direct bus to haridwar and the trip ended with watching the Ma Ganga Arti that night and the movie Gunaah the day after.

Kanyakumari Trip

It was my first trip to the southern most reaches of my country. We went to kanyakumari, the southern tip of India. Its famous for the confluence of the three mighty seas, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal & the Indian Ocean. We can see the three different coloured waters from the three seas meeting there at the tip . I however did see two different colors there. Another typical thing about the kanyakumari beach is that you can see both the sunrise and sunset in sea from here. If you get lucky i.e. its not cloudy you might be able to see the change of colors of the sea water during the sunrise or the sunset. To reach kanyakumari from chennai you can get a train to nagarkoil and then catch a bus to kanyakumari which is just 18 kms from there. The bus will drop you at a stone throw distance from the beach. Nagarcoil is not a very big town, so I would suggest you get your major supplies from chennai. While coming back from kanyakumari to nagarcoil, our driver promised to show us a few places on the way, i.e. a mountain called Sanjeevani parvat (Actually its a part that fell off the mountain that Lord Hanuman carried to the battlefield in Lanka. For furthur details, please refer to Ramayana, the hindu epic). He also took us to a beautiful temple which was associated with multiple gods, including the trinity - Vishnu, Brahma and Mahesh. There was a scripture depicting The three Gods in one statue, implying the oneness of all gods. You must be curious to see a picture of that one, but sadly cameras and even T-shirts were not allowed inside the temple.

Apart from that, a very beautiful shrine is currently being built for the great poet Thiruvalluvar , composer of The Epic Thrukkural. A huge statue of Shree Thiruvalluvar stands atop an island in the middle of the sea providing a scenic view.


You can also visit a few waterfalls around the area. Chaitraalam is one of those. There is another lovely waterfall in neighbouring Kerala which I found best among the three falls. Sorry, I dont remember its name now.

To visit these falls you need to get to thiruvenvellai from naagarcoil and then reach ten-kaasi. From ten-kaasi you get cabs to go to the waterfalls.