A short religious day trip

Annual tradition of spending summer vacations at mom's place took me to Mohali in May-June this year. The hottest summer months in Northern India. You think of stepping out of the home , rethink and reconsider looking at the scorching sun.

We started earlier on a Monday morning around 7:15am. The first destination was Mata Naina Devi shrine. The routes were good, with the entire route almost in Punjab except for the final 12kms that fall under the Himachal Pradesh jurisdiction. That is a hilly terrain with quite curvy turns. Car goes almost till the foot of the temple steps. We reached there by 9:10am and starting our ascend. This is also the place where the cable cars drop the pilgrims. So, Naina Devi temple is on a height, cable cars operate to and fro carrying the pilgrims. 

The steps are low and broad. The entire route is adorned with shops selling various stuff like Prasad, idols, other stuff like toys, wooden things, puja samagri, etc. 

We reached the top in around 10-15 mins. There's a shoes room right there for safe keeping of our footwear. We also took Prasad from a nearby shop. The temple wasn't too crowded and was well managed. We had very good darshan of the shrine followed by the shivling darshan. We reached back our car in the parking by 10:10am.

Although the view from the hills was foggy and I was told it is generally cooler at nights. The weather was hot irrespective. 

We started back and reached Anandpur Sahib Gurudwara in Punjab by around 11:30am.

It was very well managed and we again had brilliant darshan at the Gurudwara as well.

We then proceeded towards home. Took a lunch break at Haveli and reached back home by 2pm.

Though the weather was very hot and uncomfortable, we had an amazing trip and very wonderful darshan and both the places.

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