During my Spiti trip, one of my travel buddies introduced me to this beautiful temple on our way. Not only it's located at a beautiful place on National Highway 5, but there is a very interesting tail associated with this temple or Taranda Maa. In this blogpost we will take you through the journey of Taranda Devi temple, some interesting places to explore around, what not to miss when you take a halt here along with interesting stories around the temple & National Highway-5.
Above photograph shows one of the most popular spot wherein this tunnel is overlooking a steep drop meeting river in the bottom of it. National Highway 5 has many of such beautiful spots where people stop to appreciate how humans & nature offered such great masterpieces. National Highway 5 connects Firozpur in Punjab to the Sino-Indian border at Shipki La. NH-5 crosses through Moga, Jagraon, Ludhiana, Mohali, Chandigarh, Panchkula, Kalka, Solan, Shimla, Theog, Narkanda, Kumarsain, Rampur Bushahr and continues along the Sutlej River till its terminus near the Tibet border. This whole stretch beyond Shimla is very beautiful but not recommended for all drivers.
There is a very interesting story associated with this temple of Tanrada Maa. Supposedly, construction of NH-5 started after India China war when Indian Army realised that we need to build more roads to connect to our boarders to provide supplies timely to soldiers on boarder. During that, Army started building this road and at one point progress got halted for many days. Worker deaths started increasing with every passing day and that created tension amongst force working on building this road. During that time, people of Taranda village reached out to their deity & they recieved recommendation to built a temple at this particular spot. I am sure you can find specific details about this story on internet, but I found it interesting and it seems, even today Army contributes reasonably for regular activities at Taranda Maa temple.
Taranda Maa temple comes on your left after you enter into Kinnaur district while driving from Shimla towards Spiti Valley. Tanranda Maa temple is approximately 10 km away form Kinnaur/Shimla boarder. Almost every vehicles stops here to take blessings of Tanranda Maa and move ahead. Before moving ahead, it's recommended to pause for few minutes and look behind the temple. Huge mountains, deep drop and the river below makes it a fantastic place to appreciate natural beauty of Kinnaur. Now the grandness of these mountains will keep surprising you after every 10 kilometers you drive towards Spiti valley.
Above photograph shows view of the National Highway 5 close to boarder of Kinnaur district and Tanrada Maa temple. You can see how road is carved out of mountain with a roof on top of the road which is also natural part of the road. There is a a stretch of 10 kilometers where you see these beautiful curvy roads with these kinds of mountain roofs.
Above is a photograph clicked somewhere around Kinnaur/Shimla Boarder and Taranda Maa Temple. Notice if you can see people walking over the bridge. Even if you can't, try to guess the length of this bridge and then think of water flow in the river below. It's hard to express some of these things through photographs and even videos fail to create that impact unless someone does a dedicated project on some of these things. That makes travel more essential to experience some of the magical things in the world - be it natural grandness or human created infrastructure to make lives easy for other humans.
Related Post - How to reach Spiti Valley from Delhi and things to do around Kinnaur/Spiti in Himachal Pradesh
There is a small view-point built close to Taranda Maa temple from where you can look down and appreciate the depth of the slope, river and hugeness of mountains.
Now let ask where in above photograph you see 2 humans climbing up this hill? In static photograph it's certainly hard but it's fun. For us it was easy looking live and noticing 2 small dots moving. It took lot of us time for us to conclude that they are humans and not any animal or something else. With that, if you are visiting Spiti Valley and entering into the valley through Shimla, do make a point to stop at Taranda Maa temple to take blessings and enjoy brilliant views around the temple.
If you liked this post and found it helpful, I would request you to follow these things when traveling -
1. Manage your waste well and don’t litter Use dustbins.
2. Tell us if you went to a place and found it hard to locate a dustbin.
3. Avoid bottle waters in hills. Usually you get clean water in hills and water bottles create lot of mess in our ecosystem.
4. Say big no to plastic and avoid those unhealthy snacks packed in plastic bags. Rather buy fruits.
5. Don't play loud blaring music in forests of jungle camps. You are a guest in that ecosystem and disturbing the locals (humans and animals) is not polite
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