About Vashisht

As I wrote in a previous posting, Vashisht is a small village in the Indian Himalayan Mountains. It is very green with lots of plants, trees and apple orchards. It is surounded by the high mountain ranges, some of which are covered in snow all year. The village 'main street' is a mixture of shops selling carpets, clothing jewellery etc, eateries, mountaing trekking shops and household provision shops. Although shopkeepers stand in the street asking you to 'look in my shop' it is not pushy, like it is in Dheli. The people are much more chilled. It is also helpful being with Colin as many of the shopkeepers know him from previous stays in Vashisht and know he is not going to part with money for loud coloured travellers clothing or silver jewellery that possibly isn't silver.
In the village square the main feature is the Hindu Temple. It consists of three parts. The upper main temple that has been there for years. The lower temple has been there for about 10 years. This was built after a stone was found with some holy significance. The third part is the natural hot springs. Here hot water, rich in sulphur, flows out of the mountains. Villagers use it to take their daily bath, although tourists are also allowed to use it. Once you enter it, there are separate areas for men and women. In the women's area there are two parts. One has several taps where the water flows out freely, just as if you have turned on a tap full force. This is where the women wash their hair and bodies (you only wear pants so that you can get a good soaping!). Once you are rinsed off you go into the pool area and relax in the chest high water. The high sulphur content is very good for many medical complaints e.g arthritis and also makes your skin very soft. The temperature that the water comes out of the mountain is very hot, hotter than a bath that I would have in the UK, and I can't stay in the water too long. Despite this women take their young children and the children don't seem to be bothered by the temperature. I think in the UK a social worker might want to have a wee word with you if you bathed a child in water that hot!
Each village has it's own God. The Vashisht God resides in the temple. During holy ceremonies or festivals the God is removed from the Temple for everyone to see him. This is accompanied but much worship and celebration. During our stay there was a large festival in a place called Khullu, about 1.5 hours by taxi from Vashisht, where around 260 Gods from neighbouring villages congregated. The Gods are carried on poles by locals, who then WALK all the way to get to the festival. We didn't go to Khullu for this but we did join in the celebrations in Vashisht in the Temple square, where the god was on show.
There is loads of beautiful walking and trekking around the area. We stayed with the lower level walks to allow my back to get better. Despite the days in Vashisht remaining hot with clear blu skyes, the nights started becoming colder. The snow that had been covering the higher mountains when we arrived had started moving towards the lower mountains. We therefore decided it was time to head South to the Goa sunshine. We had been in Vashisht for 6 weeks and could have stayed much longer but come November/December it gets really cold. As my back had improved we booked a bus to Dheli on Monday 24th October. The journey takes 14 hours, longer if parts of the road are washed away following the monsoon rains in June-August. We weren't able to book our onward train journey (26 hour journey) from Delhi to Goa, in Vashisht, so we had to do that on arrival in Dehli. Meant we had to stay a night in Delhi but at least we would get a chance to buy a lemon squeezer so that we could enjoy our gin and tonics on the beach. Gin and tonic is purely medicinal as, because we don't take anti-malarial tables, we have convinced ourselves that the quinnine in the Indian tonic protects us from malaria. Some might think 'any excuse for a drink' but as long as we believe it, it's ok!
Colin drgging me down to the beach now for his daily, early evening walk, so will post photos of Vashisht soon.