The Himalayas, the mind-blowing marvel …!

A bath in Ganges River during ‘grahanapunya’ time is equivalent to the ‘punyam’ that we get by donating thousand cows!

At last, the travel agent called up at 10 o’clock. “Yesterday being 2nd Oct. all shops were closed in Delhi. Now, the car is coming with cooks and necessary provisions. Your breakfast is also there. Please excuse me for the delay. There won’t be any problem hereafter. You can reach all the places in time,” he spoke in an apologetic tone and hang up. In the meantime, those who wanted to do tharpanam finished it off. And, we started after breakfast. Throughout, our guide Ayyavu was shouting slogans which we repeated. It was a joyful and exciting travel. Though I was anxious about the success of the trip, the six-hour journey seemed to be over within minutes!

Haridwar is at a distance of 200 kms from New Delhi. The lunch brought by our cooks was very tasty. We stopped near a roadside daba and bought hot pulka rotis. Then, we continued on our journey. There are clean and superbly maintained restaurants on the highway connecting New Delhi and Haridwar, where we can get hot coffee and tea at very reasonable prices. As we approached Haridwar, we could see people in groups going to Ganges River. The important information about Haridwar is that this is the place where Ganges touches the earth running down from the Himalayas as a single river combining all its source streams Baghirati, Saraswati, Alaknanda, Mandhakini etc.,. In Haridwar, Ganges River is flowing at various points. People come here in crowds to bathe in the holy river. I wanted to see the aarthi done to Ganges River. Ayyavu said we could go to the place straight at 6 p.m. where aarthi was being performed. On that day alone, around three lakh people had bathed in Ganges in Haridwar, a policeman said. The crowd was so thick and unmanageable that they asked to stop the bus when it was 3 kms from the aarthi spot. We took autos and reached the spot in time. But when we saw the emission from the autos, we were really sad to think how much the pure waters of the Ganges River would be polluted by these emissions. Is it not our duty to preserve the purity of the Himalayas? If the government of Uthranjal could do something about it, it would be fine. We reached the spot, covering the1 km distance by walking. The bells started ringing; deeparadhanai was done in all the temples situated on the banks of the river. Thousands of small earthen lamps were left on the water with lit up wicks. And, huge deepams were shown to the river.