From New Delhi, the city of Uttarkashi was our next primary destination.

The total travel from Delhi to Uttarkashi is about 12 hours, so we stopped for an over-night stay at Swami Ramkripaluji’s Ashram in Rishikesh.

It is always a delight to see Swami Ramkripaluji and join in his satsangh. He always welcomes us with great hospitality.

Shree Maa kept herself occupied during the long drive by performing japa, but she also had a new friend that escorted her on the trip – Ganesha!

Shree Maa carries her cute Ganesha everywhere she goes. She even performed puja to him on the plane!

She totes him around in her purse and can often be seen holding him while she performs japa.

This Ganesha was brought to India with four of his look-alike brothers. When devotees see this cute Ganesha, they simply fall in love with him.

Shree Maa has the heart of Maha Lakshmi and, as such, when she becomes aware of a devotee’s wish, she is compelled to grant the wish. Needless to say, within no time, Shree Maa joyfully gave four of the five Ganeshas to devotees – but there was one Ganesha, this last one, that had the fortune of remaining with her.

She guards over him very carefully, so much so that if she can’t look after him, she places him on Swamij’s lap and gives Swamiji the responsibility to look after him. What fun!

The road to Uttarkashi was long and winding, and as we ascended into the scenic Himalayas we all looked forward to performing sadhana here.

Uttarkashi is an ideal place for sadhana during this time of year. Its mild and cool weather, combined with a beautiful Himalayan landscape, the flowing Ganga, and graceful wildlife, creates the inspiration to worship God continuously.

The Uttarkashi ashram serves as our hub while we are in the Himalayas, and sometimes we visit other destinations such as Gangotri and Yamunotri. On this yatra, from Uttarkashi we will travel to Gangotri, the popular pilgrimage destination where the Ganges River begins to flow.

I have a special sentiment for both Uttarkashi and Gangotri as this is where Swamiji and I performed intense sadhana just a few months back and extended our asana to over ten hours.

Upon arriving in Uttarkashi, we unpacked and took rest for a few days. We were all still very jet-lagged and in dire need of some time to adjust prior to our trip to Gangotri.

This will be Shree Maa’s first visit to the sacred destination of Gangotri, and I am especially excited to show her the places where Swamiji and I performed sadhana.

The journey to Gangotri was delightful. Shree Maa sat in the back seat and performed japa with Ganesha on her lap and she occasionally held him up to the window so he could see the lovely trees and wildlife.

It was fun to watch Shree Maa take-in the breathtaking scenery of the Himalayas and the Mother Ganges flowing turbulently downhill.

As we came closer and closer to our destination, I began to recognize the familiar landmarks, though now everything was covered with much more snow compared to last summer. This made it even more majestic in my opinion.

It was noticeably colder in October, at 40°F, then when Swamiji and I visited in the summer, but the chilling cold took nothing away from our joy of receiving darshan from Mother Ganga and the Gangotri Mandir. It was so splendid and inspiring that we hardly thought about the cold.

We stayed for just a short time in Gangotri as we were eager to return to our Uttarkashi home to begin growing our sadhana. While traveling back to Uttarkashi, we had to pull over to the side of the road to let others pass through – it was pilgrims and their horses!

I recalled from my last trip how much I admired the dedication and devotion of the pilgrims who travel to Gangotri by foot to gather the Ganges water to take back to their hometown Shiva temples.

Arriving back in Uttarkashi, Swami Pranavananda worked very hard to get the electronics to work which would allow us to share Shree Maa and Swamiji’s chanting and singing around the world. We were pleased that the internet radio worked and that the broadcasting was successful.

It is our sincere wish to continue to broadcast our sadhana from wherever we are and to share this yatra with our global family.

In Uttarkashi, we expanded our chanting to include the cover to cover Chandi Path along with the Pancha Ratna Gita (the Bhagavad Gita plus its additional stotrams), sometimes with a little more added at the end, until it became a bit more than a six hour asana every morning. Shree Maa also did puja each morning. In the evenings, we did arati and sang songs or chanted sahasranams.

Uttarkashi is a town filled with temples, many of which are very quiet and ideal for chanting. While the Vishwanath temple of Uttarkashi is the most popular and well known, there are many other lesser known temples. These are not heavily trafficked by people and therefore serve as a great place for performing the kind of extended sadhana we are accustomed to doing.

Two such temples are Laksheshwara, which Shree Maa and Swamiji visit every year, and the Anandamayi Maa Kali Mandir, which we visited for the first time this year.

The Anandamayi Maa Kali Mandir is a part of the Uttarkashi Anandamayi Ashram.

With an atmosphere of total peace and tranquility, we chanted the Kali and Shiva Sahasranams along with other stotrams for Kali and Shiva.

The silence of the temple soon became filled with divine sanskrit vibrations from our recitation, and seldom were there any other sounds with which to compete.

When we finished chanting and were starting to pack, a boy who resides at the ashram eagerly approached us to tell us that they were almost done preparing prasad. He asked us to please stay and eat lunch.

We knew, of course, that Shree Maa had already made preparations for lunch back at the house, so we respectfully declined.

The boy pleaded with us and was quite persistent!

Ultimately, the Mataji who lives there, who had cooked the prasad, came and offered us each a few bananas as prasad from the temple, which we happily accepted.

As we exited the temple, we stopped to look at a picture of Anandamayi Maa which was located just outside the main temple.

Swamiji recounted that back in his earlier years he had the great fortune of meeting Anandamayi Maa several times. He even spent quite some time being a part of her satsangh.

With keen attention on the picture, he commented on how she looked so radiant and how it reminded him of when he first met Shree Maa. Reflecting back, Swamiji gently expressed, “Shree Maa has the same radiant glow, and she is just as radiant today as she was on the first day I met her.”

We awoke early the next morning and performed worship – Shree Maa performed her morning puja, while Swamiji led the chanting of the Devi Gita. Before beginning Swamiji predicted it would take us two hours to chant the Devi Gita. Incredibly, when we finished chanting, it had been one hour and 59 minutes. Pretty close!

After our morning worship we packed our asana, iPads, and puja items and left the house for yet another adventure!

This outing was a visit to the new home of Uttam Pandit, an ardent devotee of Shree Maa. Uttam recently purchased a new house in Uttarkashi so he could stay in one location and perform his sadhana. Upon hearing that Shree Maa and Swamiji were in Uttarkashi, he requested them to please come and perform puja to bless his new home.

We arrived at Uttam’s house, which is located adjacent to the bank of Ganga. As we entered the home, Uttam offered flower garlands to us, and expressed his gratitude to Shree Maa and Swamiji for coming to bless his house.

The scenery in front of the house is divine and inspiring, and sitting inside the living room where his temple is, you can hear the sound of the Ganga flowing.

Shree Maa and Swamiji took a short tour around the house and then began preparing the puja. Shree Maa had brought a beautiful new murti of Lord Ganesh to install in his home and a picture of Mahishasura Mardini from America, which she decorated herself.

Shree Maa always creates a beautiful space for God wherever she goes, including the homes for her devotees, so they have an inspiring and beautiful place to perform their worship.

Soon Swamiji began the puja. He performed Durga Puja and Kalasha Sthapana (the establishment of the pot as a container of energy) and we chanted along with him.

When the puja was finished, we all chanted the Chandi Path together.

The newly installed Durga and Ganesha shined brilliantly as they received our worship and devotion.

The house too gained a new vibrant feeling.

Many times I have heard Swamiji comment on the difference between a temple and a home.

He says that in a home, we give God a space in the closet while we live in the main room, but in a temple we give God the main room, and we move into the closet ourselves!

Certainly Uttam’s home, blessed by the new altar installed by Shree Maa in the center room, had become a temple.

Our beloved Gurus have once again demonstrated an impeccable example of integrating karma (action) with purposeful intent.

Their every action is aligned with a fundamental vision – to establish a temple in every home and in every heart.

Their every intent is focused on their mission – to inspire the worship of the divine, to teach how to worship with the greatest sincerity, and to infuse each individual with the realization that he/she is the priest or priestess of his/her own temple.

With this as an example, Uttam was filled with immense gratitude, not only for the blessing of his new home and place of sadhana, but also for the realization that he himself is now empowered to be the priest of his own temple.

I am sure Uttam will move forward with great inspiration and will always fondly remember this heart-warming gift of love from Shree Maa and Swamiji.

Jai Maa! Jai Swamiji!