The Call of God Yash Birla feels the pull of the divine on his journeys

NAMASTEJI Namaste City Tours organisation holds customised tours of Mumbai city They have all kinds of tours from the cultural to the culinary and the religious. Namaste holds half day and full day temple tours (with lunch) to all landmark temples In Mumbai city Call- 09323652111 or 022-23888711 to enquire about their temple tours.' Yash Birla believes in Hiking the road less travelled. He is certainly not your conventional tourist. In fact, the spiritual path has always beckoned. Says Yash, "I have always been more drawn to Himalayan temples. I started going there when I was 13. My first exposure to Himalayas was when I visited Badrinath and Kedarnath with my parents. 1 went with them twice and I always felt like going hack. When I visited those places people kept talking of places beyond these well-known spiritual destinations. Something associated with Mahabharath, Krishna and the Pandavas... I heard of places where the Pandavas gave up life, their final journey. The tales of places that Lord Krishna visited intrigued me. Or the place where Ram did Tapasya."

From this travel lore was borne Yash’s desire to explore the lesser known. I had a great desire to go beyond 'popular’ spiritual jaunts but accessing those destinations was tough. They are like mountaineering treks. You need to have lot of endurance, you have to sleep in tents and be ready for anything. 1 take my staff with me. 1 do not take a risk on on all that but there is and element of danger, because the weather is very unpredictable, there can he a landslide any time. You are in the hands of God. For me these places are important because they are not that well known. Any place that has too many visitors becomes commercial The shops and music, the touts... I like to go to places that have retained their sanctity, peace and quiet So the moment I hear a place is least visited or the highest or very difficult to go to, 1 feel a pull to go there. Yash recounts, “The first of these places I went to was called Satopath, which is the last place where the Pandavas gave up their bodies. It is at a height of 17,000 feet. It is ahead of Badrinath, and you have to trek for three days to get there. The first stop is called Lakshiwa, the second stop Chakratirth, which is so called because Krishna’s chakra (discus) resides there. There is a triangular shaped lake, and Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the trio on the subtle shape of Ekadashi, which is supposed to be the most auspicious day, represent each side. When you meditate in that place, it’s like you are in another realm. After I returned, I took a week to come back to normal life”. Yash tell of a thrilling journey. “I went to Brahma Gufe, behind Kedarnath. Actually, I had a dangerous experience there because we thought we woutd come back in six hours. The guide took us over some glacier, and once there, we lost all direction. It became totally dark. There coutd have been a landslide at any time. We had no food and no tents… Brahma Gufa is a place, which basically Lord Brahma came to before he conceived the world. The cave is blocked because now it is Kalyug. In Satyayug, the gufas opened to the banks. lot of sages came there to give up their bodies once they felt they had achieved whatever they wanted to. So I went there. I was on glaciers and boutders and very difficult to get to”. Yash has felt divine power, intangible though it may be. “The third place that comes to my mind is Talsheela. It is where Goddess Kali is claimed to have killed Mahiasura … She killed him on a black rock”, he says. “Kali’s energy is very powerful and somebody who was with us experienced this. He got that energy in himself – nearly fell off the cliff, we had to hold him back. We were there in winter. It was cold. But that rock is hot all the time. You can fell the heat even when it is snowing”, Yash explains. After that breathtakingly beautiful and enlightening travel Yash says, “I went through a phase when I hated coming back to Mumbai. It is still not my favorite city. Every time I sued to come back from these places, I used to get very disoriented. But spirituality teaches you – you are where you are meant to be. I am meant to be here because I have my karma, my family, my duty, my work is to be here. I am very dedicated to all this. You are here for a purpose. You have to enjoy where you are. If you want to be somewhere else, you may not have achieved spirituality.” Travel is not soo much about destination, but the journey itself. Yash says, “I walk into as many places as I can because I can ‘feel’ that process. I’m not against landing there in a helicopter; I may do that if I do not have the time. If you land from Mumbai to Kedarnath, by the time you reach there, you are not able to absorb the energy. If you go slowly and you experience the effort of the whole energy then you will dissolve your earthly connections; your ego and you will get into the spiritual mode. So, by the time you reach there, you are ready to receive it. So I always try to walk”. Now Yash wants to go to a place at 16,000 feet, called Kavpushakti. “It is very dangerous to traverse to where you have to climb on all fours. It is ahead from Joshimath, which is ahead from Badrinath. The holy books say that Kalpurhani eternally chants the Ramayan in that place. If you are at that level and if you close your eyes at night when you are by yourself, not in a group of 15to 20 people, you can hear the chants. That intrigued me so much that I had to get there. I coutd not though. There was a raging river and it was practically impossible to cross it. I kept sending my staff to exert pressure on them to make a plank, to do anything to get there. Someday though I will go there. “