Snap Well

From Pandukeshwar heading back to Rishikesh, we stopped at Vishnu Prayag. Before I describe about Vishnu Prayag I would like to explain few things I learned from local people about Prayag in Uttarakhand. Before this, I used to think Prayag is another name for the famous city of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. It is after visiting Uttarakhand I learnt, Prayag is a place of confluence or merging of two or more rivers. It actually means a place of Sacrifice in Sanskrit. At these points, when two rivers meet, one of the rivers sacrifices its name and identity to the other. There are five such prayags in Uttarakhand, the land of Gods as they say and I don't think any other states in India has these many Prayags. Rivers Dhauliganga, Nandakini, Pindari, Saraswati merge with Alaknanda and Sacrifices the name and their identities at Vishnu Prayag, Nand Prayag, Karna Prayag, RudraPrayag respectively and Alaknanda sacrifices its name and identity at Dev Prayag on merging with river Bhagirat

On the way to Guptkashi, we visited one of the ancient temples dedicated to Goddess Kali. It lies at an altitude of 6000 feet (1800 meters) on the river banks of Saraswathi in Himalayas surrounded by the peaks of Kedarnath. It is one of the 108 Shakti Peeths established by the great Adi Shankaracharya.  Instead of regular highway route from Uttarkashi, our driver took us through a sub-way to Guptkashi that passes through beautiful green top mountains, villages that situated on top and foothills of the mountains, beautiful agricultural fields on the hills and valleys.  The image below is the famous point called Rane top on the way to Guptkashi on this route and it is the highest peak of the region. You can see the vehicles passing through stopped here to have a view of the valley. Here you can see the images of the beautiful view of the valley around. You can see the village and agricultural fields like steps in the image below. This is what you see on r