Churdhar
Yatra: When God himself invited us to his home
Introduction
The sanctuary is named after
the Churdhar Peak. Churdhar Peak (elevation
of 3647 metres; 11,965 feet) is the highest peak in Sirmour district and is
also the highest peak in the outer Himalayas.
The peak has a great religious significance for the peopleof Sirmour, Shimla, Chaupal and Solan of Himachal
Pradeshand Dehradun of Uttrakhand.
Churdhar is a holy place related with Shri Shirgul Maharaj (Chureshwar Maharaj),
a deity widely worshipped in Sirmour andChaupal. The
major god of area is Lord Shirgul Maharaj.Many gods goes their for religious
pilgrim and bath at the holy temple of lord shirgul
The Churdhar Peak is
mentioned in the book, The
Great Arc, by John Keay but is referred to as The Chur. It is
from this peak that George
Everest made many
astronomical readings and sightings of the Himalaya mountains around 1834. He was the Surveyor General of India and did the initial survey of the full length of India as
well as some very accurate measurements of the earth's curvature.
The Trek
We were planning to visit some
awesome place in the Himalayas during the time of our holidays of one week in
April 2016. We found Churdhar on internet and found this tempting after reading some
blogs. So we collected all the information about the place and decided to go. We
left sundernagar at about 10 PM at 13th April. We were five members (me,
ankush, rakesh, rajesh, venus) at the start of the journey.
Generally there are lots of
routes through which the place can be approached but the main routes are from
Nohradhar, Sirmour of14km and Saranh, Choupal of 8km.
We chose to go through the
route from Saranh and decided to return through the route to Nohradhar. In this
way our journey set off.
The trek was simple and not
much hard for the people like us who had gone through a no. of such journeys
before. So we reached Churdhar sanctuary in about 3 hours easily. We relaxed in
front of the fire in a shop as weather was getting cold in the evening time. Each
one of us took a cup of tea and had a small conversation with the shopkeeper
about the place. We spent our night at the dharamshala there at free of cost
with paying a small amout for blankets only.
After the dinner while everyone
preferred to go to bed, me and ankush decided to explore the place in the dark.
Earlier we heard some people speaking about some animals present in those
forests. So I was little scared but still we stepped inside that dark jungle.
After walking for some time we found
a kind of sculpture (not visible in the dark) of some god with lot of flags buried
around it. We saw a stair there supported to a massive stone which just heightened
our curiousity and we started climbing that stair. That stone’s surface was little
slippery so we did this very carefully.
There was small kind of temple
situated over that stone with some sculptures of lord Shirgul and other gods. This
stone was a dangerous place to be at as ahead of the stone there was nothing but
a big ditch. So we just sat down there over the stone very carefully. The tranquility
of this place was driving me just crazy getting a feeling like I was gonna
spend my whole life over that stone.
I suddenly realized while
sitting over that stone , earlier we heard a story about. In the ancient times
when lord Shirgul used to live at churdhar, this stone served as a path to the
underground world. In the era of man in the history people used to throw coins
into this to fulfill their wishes. It is believed that for security reasons
this opening was closed in the present time so that to avoid any kind of
accidents.
After spending some quality
time at this place we got off the stone somehow(as it wasn’t an easy task in
the dark). We decided to not to go further towards the peak because of the fear
of meeting some animal. Then we spent the rest of the night sleeping in the
dharamshala.
In the morning we got out of
the bed at about 7AM. Outside sceneries were beautiful, kind of amazing. One of
the wicked things about this place was the absence of the toilets and any kind
of sanitary system resulting in polluting the place badlly as one had to go out
in the open for any kind of excretional activities. Toilets could be
constructed at Churdhar at any time as govt. had issued funds for this but the
real problem was the scarcity of water.
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View from the Churdhar sancruary |
There is a belief about the
water present in the temple that this water is considered to have exactly
similar properties with the sacred water Gangajal in the holy river Ganges. So me
and ankush decided to take bath there while rest of us just washed their faces
as temperature was very low in the morning. It was a ritual bath which no one
was allowed to take by their own. A priest(panditji) was pouring 5 jugs of
water over the head of a person after reciting some mantras. In the 50C
temperature in the morning when someone just pour some amount of ice cold water
on your head, it’s like letting you eat only a few bites of your favorite food
while keeping it in front of you all the time. We were trembling after the bath
but luckily the heat from the sun was adequate to compensate the cold.
After visiting the temple of
lord Shirgul maharaj we started moving towards the Churdhar peak which wasn’t
much far. So here I was after about 20 minutes of travel at the mighty Churdhar
peak, the highest peak of the Shivalik Himalayas.
A gigantic lord Shiva statue
was resting on the highest point. It was like awwwwesome. A kind of feeling of
having real shivji in front of me was crossing my mind. This was remarkable.
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Churdhar Peak |
We took some photos at the peak, spent some quality time watching
literally about every mountain range in any direction.
Seriously speaking I hadn’t
feel this journey till Churdhar peak that much exciting except a few things
like sitting alongside lord Shiva at the peak or exploring the legends of
Shirgul maharaj in the night after 10PM. So when my group mates decided to move
on from Churdhar, I decided to spend some time alone. Ankush stayed with me
while rest of three left.
We sat over the massive stones
for some time and cherish the beauty of the Himalayas. We took some great photos
and then left the place.The only thing in my mind at that time was that I would
try to reach Noradhar(our next supposed destination) in the least time
possible. So we started running fast over those slippery mountains(slippery
because of snow). After half an hour later we found ourselves alone in the
forest and no one could be seen far far away. Ankush started saying that we
have come to the wrong path and started applying some logics there. He was
right at that time but may be I didn’t want to understand the logics at that
time and may be I just wanted to get
lost in those forests and found some brand new path which would lead us to a brand
new destination with completely new people and I wanted something mysterious to
happen .
Also I was getting frustrated
because of no. of things like weather of the place(sun was spewing fire on us)
and boringness of the journey, so I just I didn’t want to go back. Ankush agreed
to me and we decided to found some new place if we weren’t on the right track.
LOST IN THE DENSE ALPINE FOREST
Now
this was the starting of our adventurous, exciting and awesome journey that
would be talked about for decades. There is a saying that when people do
something great , exciting , historical they are totally unaware of this fact
at that time, same thing happened with us.
We could see some houses very
far away from where we were standing so we settled to move towards those houses
by walking over the ridge. We had a complete day ahead as it was only 10
o’clock in the morning. I thought we will be able to find something secure till
12 PM easily. Also there was a little hope in my mind that we were on the right
track to Nohradhar. After walking constantly for about 2 hours , we started to
get the feeling that something was going wrong after walking over the predicted
path with complete hope.
Sun was up now straight above
head warming the place with very high degree of temperature. We started craving
for water as no drinking water we carried from Churdhar. Also the water
scarcity is a major problem in this area. Luckily we had carried out a solution
to our hunger i.e. two pranthas. But without water it wasn’t an easy task to
swallow the food. Clock was ticking all the time as we were thinking ,acting or
whatever the shit we were doing.
I could
see an end point to that path on that ridge with a hope that from that point I
could see some village down the mountain or meet someone like a shepherd but
everytime this hope vanished when we crossed such countless end points.
I finally gave up and told
ankush to lead with whatever the way he wanted as my mind had stopped working
and I just wanted to find some person alive in that jungle and drink some
water.
There is saying ‘Where there is a will, there is a way’. We too found solution to the problem of water by collecting snow (a no. of heaps of snow were there which remained hidden away from the reach of sunshine) in the packets of snacks that we had eaten eaten earlier. This snow melted in this packets after some time and we had our lunch with enough amount of water. We were happy as we solved one of our major problem. But the real problem was still unsolved and time was moving with constant speed. It was about 1PM.
I started to worry a lot as we
were trapped in an alpine forest with long trees in it with no trace of actual
path and also the fear of wild animals was scaring me too. I thank ankush for
his patience at this time as he stayed calm at that time and kept on moving.
We walked then for about 1 hour
in that dense forest but still lost and things were same. There was a channel
(nala) which was completely dry and destroyed. We decided to move alongside
that channel and continued our journey.
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The Channel(Nala)
One great thing I liked at that time was
that we were lost though but still we were having fun like talking bullshit
with each other and walking happily on this adventurous journey.
Suddenly that dry channel
started helping us out when we see a little amount water in it. This small
amount converted to large as we moved further which was enough to make two
thirsty beings satisfy. This meeting water thing just made us happier and kept
the hope alive.
One
thing that I really got to understand while were lost in that jungle was the
true value of the drinking water in life and everything I knew about the water
scarcity in the world from my past experience just crossed my mind and this
thing just added one extra dimension to my thinking.
Anyways we were still lost and
moving alongside the Nala(channel) with a hope of finding path at the end of
this channel. While we were speaking shit to each other , out of the sudden we
could see a path, an actual path, which I firstly thought that I was
hallucinating but it was really there. We reached on this path fast and saw a
signboard with something written over it. It read ‘mandir ka rasta(way to
temple). Hell yeah, this was end of the dilemma, the riddle was solved , the
hopelessness was ended. We got out of the inevitable, we were happy very very
much.
We started doing crazy things.
There was a horse or a mule (I’m sure what it was). Ankush decided to ride it,
surprisingly he got succesfull to jump over it’s back in 2-3 attempts. He rode
that horse for a really long distance which was actually great for a fresher.
In the excitement we had
forgotten our tiredness and even conceived the place wrong. We thought it was
Noradhar and we were on the right track. We met two villagers there who
enlightened us with the truth. It was some village named Nora-Bhora which would
further lead to Haripurdhar. I had heard the name Haripurdhar before coming on
this trek. On the internet someone had mentioned the trek from Haripurdhar to
Churdhar of about 50km, which wasn’t true actually. I was stunned when they
introduced us with the place. But there was nothing like that and there was a
concrete road to Haripurdhar from this village.
It was half past three in the
afternoon.These villagers then told us the bad news that the last bus to Shimla
had left and next bus only could get us to the Haripurdhar where we had to seek
to seek out for residence. They offered us to stay in the village happily.
There was a jagrata (waking up for all night by singing bhajans and dancing for
the deity) that night in the village ,they said lord Shirgul himself sent us to
the village and you should stay for jagran. Firstly we hesistated a little as
we had no idea what kind of people they were but we were out of options so we
decided to stay.
NIGHT AT THE PAHARI VILLAGE
One of the villagers took us to
his home. His family welcomed us well. He had to go somewhere but his son was
there to talk to us, his name was anuj. He was between 25-30 years of his life,
he was married and had a doughter. These people showed a lot of hospitality
towards us. We were feeling kind of like old movies in which when some
gentleman would come from city to a village then the respect he gets , the same
respect we were getting there. Anuj bhai talked to us for long time about all
the legends of Lord Shirgul and all other local deities. He told us about the
so called sister of Shirgul maharaj ,goddess Bhangyani mata. Her temple was
situated on a hill top , which we could see from his home. He advised us to
visit this temple as it was on the way to Haripurdhar.
After resting for some time
Anuj bhai took us to the inside of the village where jagran had to held. After
some time the local deities one Shirgul maharaj and other Bhijat maharaj
arrived in the village with people celebrating and performing their folk dance
around.
While we were standing in the
crowd along with other villagers and watching all this, everybody was looking
at us with glittering eyes and was trying for a hand shake, it was we had
become their heroes. In all the villagers here we met a more civilized person
than others, Ajay Thakur ,a passout senior of our college currently working as
junior engineer. He took us home and greeted us well. We talked a lot about a
no. of things. His story seemed kind of inspirational to us, as it wasn’t an
easy task to become a govt. officer when you are from such a backward and small
village and where most of the people just want to become a farmer or a
shopkeeper. He was really a very nice guy.
Then we went out for dinner to
the house where the jagran was going to take place. I had never been offered
such delicious food in my life outside my home. They were adding ‘Ghee’ to the
food like water. We were having dinner in a room with a group of around 10
people. When they finished their food, they waited for us to finish. We were
surprised and happy by the respect these people were giving to us.
After the dinner Mr. Ajay took
us to the long awaited festive dance. It was supposed to take place in the open
but it was raining at that time , so these people gathered in room and started
the jagran.
In the middle of the room a
group in a circle was singing some pahari religious songs, inside the circle
turn by turn different males and females were dancing .outside that circle we
along with other villagers were enjoying this.
Some
days before coming on this trek I was having a dream like living in the
mountains, experiencing the life of these pahari people. So sitting there in
that room I thought, it was like a dream come true.
 The Jagran
In the morning we got up
early and had our breakfast at Mr. Ajay’s home. Once again food was more than
just delicious. We decided to visit the Bhangyani mata(sister of lord Shirgul)
temple before leaving to Shimla. So Anuj bhai and Ajay sir said us goodbye at
the bus stand. Then we took bus and reach at the temple. This place
was great situated at a hill top After visiting to the Bhangyani mata temple we
headed to our home.
 Bhangyani Mata Temple
Finally I just want to say that this wasn’t only a trip for me but a lot of lessons of life we we got experience in these days, which is going to stay in our hearts till the last breath in this mortal body. All the struggles, problems and new ways we guys discovered to tackle them. This trip gave me a kind of energy and confidence to sail through the unfair troubles and hardness of unexplained and mysterious life. The paharis just won my heart , my heart is filled with tonnes of respect for these people and I just fell in love with this pahari culture.
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