J&K Trip Day 1 Part 2:

Now we were walking on Residency road towards Raghunath Mandir.It was like a mini commercial Street there with good stores like Wills Lifestyle and Coffee day and also small stores of sweets and even stores of ARMS AND AMMUNITION!!!(No wonder terrorists find arms so easily here).Then we enter Raghunath mandir after depositing our cameras and mobiles in the cloak room. This temple is nothing less than a cheap exhibition which comes in Palace grounds.Atleast people in the exhibition are selling something but here in the temple they are selling god only and his blessings too. Only if u keep money will the priest give u the blessings and Prasad. This temple is also very beautiful but the greediness of the priest puts u off so much that spiritualism does not come at all. And if u are a person like me who is very superstitious then be ready to spend some money at every doorstep.Anyways I think whatever I make is all god’s blessings so giving something back to him or people who take me to him is not bad at all. I also saw Saligram stones over there. These are basically 1000’s of small black stones which are worshipped.Saligram is Abhi’s native place and he says that there is only one Saligram stone and it’s so holy that no one can touch it. But anyways I was very happy to touch the fake saligram’s and seek real blessings for my family and friends.
After this the next stop was a palace called Amar Mahal Palace which was the last place of residence of Dogra Raja’s. This palace looks awesome and it looks like we were in a completely different country. It was very neatly maintained and it had a lot of paintings. Through this I learnt about Nala and Damayanti.Also there are large life size portraits of all the Raja’s and Rani’s which we did take pictures so that I can get something like this done for my palace J,Outside the greenery was awesome and I knew it was picture time. Lots of snaps with different poses and styles and then it was time for us to leave but not before checking out the Raja’s throne made of 50kg pure gold. It was a delight for the eyes. Once we were done with this it was finally the end of our sight seeing of Jammu and we were on our way to Katra.
Routine security checkups were happening on the way but we were enjoying the drive. Good roads and great scenery somewhat reminded me of Coorg.Before I knew I was fast asleep only to be woken up for a treat of ice cream (Kwality mango duet) and mineral water. Once done with the eating time for my sleep again. However pit stop happened again and this time for tea. The place looked really dingy but the tea was good. Now I feel bad that I don’t know the name of the hotel nor did we click any snaps there.30 mins from that hotel and we finally reached our destination our 5 start hotel named “White Orchid”. It’s a superb hotel with all the 5 star amenities and the best part were the toiletries my fav biotique (hehehe I know Ur also like that naah). Anyways after we freshened up I realized something is wrong with our door.Inspite of having a carpenter they could not fix the problem so we changed our room from 426 to 424 (Yeah sexy number according to numerology).First they get our luggage late and now this. Somehow dint get a good start L.By the time we settled down it was already time for our dinner. Our travel agent Nishant came to collect the cash and explained the itenary of the entire trip. It sounds interesting but u know me Ill always have some negative thoughts atleast sometimes.Anyways since our dinner was MAP plan (That’s modified American plan for people who don’t know what that means) we ordered to the fullest and ate till we burped really hard. Not to forget we also went for quiet walks outside the garden and clicked few pictures in the dark and beautiful lit up hilltop. For now day 1 seems really nice and im waiting for day 2 now!!!!Until I write this is Pallavi saying barla!!!!