![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/IMG_20171206_081910.jpg\")
<\/a>Chamoli in the morning. Barring a few tea shops nothing was operational.<\/p><\/div>\n
The span of working hours in those remote hills were pretty narrow. Shared cabs to Joshimath weren’t available until 8:30 AM. A kid, who was travelling in the taxi also carried a crossbred Tibetan Mastiff puppy. The puppy did not like the shakes and twists throughout the stretch of the journey. It kept squealing all the way to Joshimath.<\/p>\n
Once I was off the cab, I entered the first hotel that I saw\u2014Hotel Sriman Palace. Their reception had a rate list hung behind the counter.\u00a0The cheapest being a dormitory bed at five hundred. I asked if dormitories were available. The owner instead gave me a a twin bed room with a balcony for the same price. Off-season travelling had its own perks.<\/p>\n A chat with the owner quashed my hopes of venturing into Badrinath. The roads had been closed since late-November owing to snowfall and would not open until late-March. At most, I could go till Pandukeshwar.<\/p>\n During the winters, while Badrinath is closed, Badrinarayan is worshipped at the Narasimha Temple<\/a> located in Joshimath. A new temple was being built to replace the old Narsimha Temple. A prophecy says that the day the right hand of the Narsimha idol will fall off, there would be destruction of the current Badrinath temple and the route would become inaccessible.<\/p>\n A new Narsimha temple was under construction and was slightly more lavish than the older temple.<\/p><\/div>\n The older temple. Photography inside the temple was prohibited.<\/p><\/div>\n I was\u00a0surprised\u00a0to see\u00a0some text in\u00a0Tamil with English and Hindi transliterations (not translations). Later that night, my friend Mogit told me that the head priest of Badrinath had to be a South Indian Keralite Brahmin. This system of non-local head priests for all the four pilgrimage sites were set up by Shankaracharya himself.<\/p>\n The upper floor of the temple was dedicated to Shankaracharya with an elaborate text that attributed him to certain efforts in re-converting a lot of Buddhists to Hindus.<\/p>\n Vasudev temple<\/a> right beside Narasimha mandir.<\/p><\/div>\n A flight of stairs right\u00a0beside Narasimha temple steeply descended down towards a hiking trail to Vishnuprayag. The stretch was almost two-and-a-half kilometres long. While it was possible to drive about eleven kilometres to reach there, the foot-trail had its own charm. I was the only one on that\u00a0nicely laid out trail. Only once I was crossed by a sanyasi<\/em> who was probably headed to Joshimath from one of the shacks that looked like abandoned homes lying in isolation somewhere on the slopes leading to the valley.<\/p>\n I passed beside this military barrack that stocked ammunition for supply in case of any warfare with China or any drill at the border.<\/p><\/div>\n The trail was mostly exposed through open patches. Sometimes it had concrete roads passing through shades like these.<\/p><\/div>\n This is where Alakananda and Dhauliganga, two tributaries of Ganges, meet.<\/p><\/div>\n The entire valley opens itself up to its full majestic view from the bed of the river.<\/p><\/div>\n While I was a Vishnuprayag, it started to drizzle. I waited for about half an hour for a shared cab\u00a0to Joshimath. Once I realised that\u00a0I\u00a0had to get back before dark, I walked back the same way I had come. While coming I had noticed many boards warning of bears and leopards. It was highly unlikely I would spot one.\u00a0Still,\u00a0I thought it was much better to pay heed to the caution.<\/p>\n The motorable road (Joshimath-Badrinath) that passes in front of Vishnuprayag temple. It is also the starting point of Nanda Devi Reserve area.<\/p><\/div>\n A note on the food:<\/strong>\u00a0I had really good food at Joshimath. The block canteen at the block office\u00a0served me aloo parathas<\/em> without oil. In the\u00a0afternoon, I had really good (and hot)\u00a0chhole samose<\/em>. I was actually lucky to enter a sweet shop that were still frying a batch of samosas. At night, I went to a\u00a0roadside vendor who sold momos and soup in front of the Joshimath Gurudwara. The mutton momos were some of the best I have had.<\/p>\n I must admit that the cold made me a lot lazier. I didn’t feel like waking up before 7:30 AM. Hotel Heaven felt\u00a0further\u00a0from its namesake with its rooms and room service. I had to wake up the caretaker for some hot water so that I could make some tea. What I\u00a0was given was lukewarm water, … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[607,68,601,608],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-sauvik","4":"post-3196","6":"format-standard","7":"has-post-thumbnail","8":"category-travel","9":"post_tag-joshimath","10":"post_tag-trekking","11":"post_tag-uttarakhand-trip-17","12":"post_tag-vishnuprayag"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/DSC04111.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3196"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3422,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3196\/revisions\/3422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\nNarsimha temple at Joshimath<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a>Hike to Vishnuprayag<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"