And then we were on our way to the Amarnath cave, the reason why we decided to go on this trip! The base camp was at Baltal from where we would go to the Amarnath cave either walking or by ponies or by helicopter. Our bus was escorted by the military vans while traveling from Srinagar to Baltal and the scenery on the way looked liked the ones in the pictures below!

We reached Baltal at around 8:00PM and we had to walk around a kilometer or so to reach the place where there were tents to sleep. The tents were quite good with warm blankets and all. There were a lot of food stalls where they were serving food for free. The kind of service that is provided to the yatries here is simply unbelievable, I haven't seen it anywhere else in India. People just go beyond the boundaries, they would never let the yatries wait for food, would always be around to provide the chairs, water etc. A salute to the J&K people.

We started at 5:00AM from the Baltal base camp to the Amarnathji ki guha, the holy cave where the shiva linga gets formed out of ice once a year.
We took the ponies. This time the name of my pony was 'Soldier', dad's was 'Badal' and mom's 'Raju'. Going to the Amarnath cave by ponies is probably one of the most adventurous things once can do and it is quite dangerous too as the path is very narrow and a mistake can take two lives (pony's and the rider's). The reason why they cannot make roads or lay railings there to reach the cave is because of the landslides that happens frequently. Given all this, the training the ponies would have undergone is something that amazed me, they hardly make any mistake!

Well amidst all this, we go there mainly to enjoy the nature which is just out of the world. One shouldn't miss going to this place at least once in a lifetime. I got a feeling that our country has such rich natural resources after crossing so many mountains, seeing so many kind of trees, the rivers, the snow. It was a place where rivers originate, the snow that falls on the mountains become ice rocks which then melts and flows as a river.

The entire journey is through these huge mountains, the himalayas. we spent around twelve hours in the valleys and peaks of these mountains. The sceneries are awesome, absolutely wonderful! I was so very glad for having been there, I am grateful to all those who are responsible for it. The pictures that follow is an attempt to substantiate my claim :-)

We reached Srinagar next. This was a short visit before going to Baltal from where we trek to the Amarnath cave, we were going to come back to Srinagar after the Amarnath trek.

The previous day we had learnt that there was a major attack in Srinagar (near Lal Chowk), we were watching TV in Katra, live coverage of the spot and the happenings over there. We also learnt from local people that what we get to see in Bangalore and other cites are only tailored versions of those coverages.

On the way to Srinagar, we crossed a lot of hills, the views were beautiful, greenery everywhere and water streams here and there...

We met quite a few military people on our way, they were on work...sometimes they used to wave at us too :-)

We visited the Sri Shankara temple in Srinagar, its not the Sharada Peetha that Sri Sankaracharya established, that one is in POK.
This temple was constructed by Maharaj Pratap Singh, it has a huge Shiva Linga and it seems Shankaracharya carried out his penance here.

The people in Srinagar were raw (rugged), confident with high self esteem. Another thing that needs to be mentioned is the purity of their language. They say "Parichay ki jiye" if they want to know your identity :-) They address men as "Sriman ji" :-)

A view of the Dal lake

The next destination was Vaishno Devi temple in Katra, J&K. I learnt that J&K state has their own laws that are different from all other states in India.

In a cool and pleasant early morning we climbed the hill riding on ponies, assisted by the pony-owners. The pony-owners were kind and helpful, they live in houses that are quite far from Katra and they stay near the Vaisno Devi temple and work with the govt. to take people to the temple. All of them carried Id cards.

The pony I was riding was called Chamak-challo and the owner's name was Younis. Irrespective of their religion, people there greet each other saying "Jai Matha Di".

We also met a kannada officer in one of the many check posts we went through, he told us that there were a lot of kannadigas in Kashmir!

A view from the Vaishno Devi temple walkway

Could be used for a Pepsi ad!

A view of the Vaisno Devi temple hill in the evening

Finally I am inspired to blog on the Amarnath trip that I went to in 2005, thanks to Mom and Dad who are visiting the north and east of India now. The trip mainly was to Amarnath, we did visit a few places before and after that.
We started off with Delhi. Nothing much to say about Delhi except that people never obey traffic signals! Yeah, stress on "never"... they just keep going as if the lights don't mean anything. And another thing I felt strongly at that time was that I hated Delhi weather (its a natural feeling for someone born and brought up in Bangalore I guess :-))

A picture taken near the Qutub Minar, Delhi

Our next stop was at Jalandhar in Punjab. We visited the SriDevi temple there. Punjab is a rich state and thats known. But I must mention that I was surprised and pleased by the fact that they provided refrigerated water to general public on the streets :-)

A view of the Sridevi Mandir, Jalandhar, Punjab

The above two pictures show the streets of Punjab, the second one with paintings on the street.