Badrinath Temple

* Badrinath Temple *

I stood there outside there outside…starring at the temple for several long minutes...

It’s a dream to be at this holy place and God calls only the lucky ones to His abode

The sound of my elders echoed deep in my ears… I felt highly blessed… for I felt like I was among the chosen few… who had gotten a chance to enliven a dream… The dream of visiting and experiencing the spiritual and the mystic aura surrounding “the holiest” of all shrines… The Badrinarayan shrine in Badrinath… once again after several long years…

The temple also kept its promise… of leaving me awestruck and captivated at first sight itself! Surrounded by pristine spotless beauty, nestled in the verdant protective folds of the Himalayan mountains - The Badrinath Temple was draped in a jamboree of bright colors and it looked every inch beautiful and magnificent as when I had seen it in as a small child of seven, as I had envisioned it since then and as it had looked from a distance while standing on the narrow footbridge over the Alaknanda river a few moments earlier…

Although Badrinath temple is a place that originally dates back to the 9th‪#‎century‬ but the present temple is a modern one which has been renovated and restructured many a times from its original construct. Adi‪#‎Shankaracharya‬, the founder of the Advaita Vedanta school of philosophy, had initially discovered the Badrinarayan idol in the Alakananda River from the Narad Kund and installed it in the Garud Gupha near the hot water spring of Tapt Kund. Seven centuries later, it was moved to the spot where the current temple stands today by the Garhwal kings and a swarna kalash (golden pot) was placed at its shikhara by the Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore in the 18th century. The building was again damaged by a massive earthquake in 1803 and was then refurbished by the king of Jaipur.

But inspite of all the modernizations, the land still reverberates with a heart of a divine era that it has witnessed, the love of the devotees is inescapably palpable in the ambiance, the original idol has remained untouched and this is what makes this tirtha so mesmerizing