Day 4/5 – Kurukshetra, Haryana

Now that I had the fortune of seeing Krishna Janmabhoomi and Vrindavan, it was time to go to Kurukshetra, one of the most holiest places in Hindu Sanatana Dharma, where the Lord gave Arjuna, and the world, the Bhagavad Gita. As the cousins range on either side of the battlefield for the “mother of all battles”, Arjuna worries about killing his family and friends on the other side. Bhagavad Gita is the conversation (700 shlokas) that transpires between the Lord and Arjuna, at the end of which Arjuna stands up transformed and ready to fulfill the Lord’s Master Plan.

Day 2 – Vrindavan

[Pilgrimage] reconciles the spiritual and the material, for to go on pilgrimage is to make the body and its actions express the desires and beliefs of the soul. – Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

In 7 years every cell of your body gets replaced by a new cell. There must be a permanent point inside you around which this process is happening, the point of no cell and no-thing, the site of the holiest pilgrimage – Shunya

Whether you consider a pilgrimage as a spiritual sojourn, or a yearning to visit architectural, religious and/or historical sites, a pilgrimage transforms you. Read about my pilgrimage to Braj Bhumi spread over five days in September of 2022. We covered Mathura, Vrindavan, Gokul, Nandagaon, Govardhan and Barsana; and finally drove across to Haryana and ended it in Jyotisaar, Kurukshetra.