Uttrakhand
We at Versatile Adventure Holidays/India Tours invite you to take up a journey to the state of Uttarakhand – we can confidently promise a couple of things. All your expectations would be met. And the amazingly diverse and beautiful state would open up countless inconceivable dimensions of travel that might never even have occurred to you.
The Uttarakhand experience might leave you stranded for words, when someone asks you to define the simple word ‘beauty’. Beauty is so inherent to almost all things Uttarakhand stands for – the magnanimous Himalayas, the Holiest of the rivers, the Spiritual mystery, stunning landscapes, the incessantly colourful play of nature, enchanting history carved in ancient stones, a mesmerizing floral and faunal plethora and the simplest of the people. Myths, anecdotes and stories are part of every visual that unfolds itself to the eyes of the beholder.
It was thus not a mere coincidence that Charles A. Sherring, the celebrated 19th century British anthropologist and surveyor noted down in his highly acclaimed work ‘Western Tibet and British Borderland’ - “In those lovely valleys there is still the romance and poetry of life: each tree has its God, each bush its Spirit” – Mr. Sherring was describing a fair part of Uttarakhand.
It was also not another coincidence that after his first visit to Uttarakhand Mahatma Gandhi could not restrain himself from alluding the region as ‘the Switzerland of India’.
The age-old Hindu traditions have always accorded highest esteem to the glory of the colossal and composed heights of the Himalayas which are spontaneously assumed to be the chosen consecrated residences of Gods. A whole lot of the Hindu lore sets out from this ‘Land of the Gods’.
Pilgrimages to these heights dating back to more than 1500 years are found recorded in authentic documents and Uttarakhand still attracts millions of devout people who come here with the chaste objective of spiritual emancipation and revelation.
Today, these mountains are no longer restricted to the religious or the spiritual – as a traveller one can get pleasure from mountaineering, trekking, mountain biking, rock climbing or simply strolling amongst the highest mountainous terrains in the world.
The winter months lay vast and expansive snow-carpets as the slopes, which turn into playgrounds for adventurous snow-revelers to ski amongst the most beautiful of surroundings. Come spring and the land begins to ooze of nascent life with frozen springs making way for the singsong of unsullied streams, waiting buds coming to full blossom creating an outburst of million hues with as many colorful butterflies and insects joining in the chorus. The spring season of Uttarakhand would make you comprehend and probably redefine the word Harmony.