A Mountain Bike Ride and Visit to Brahma Temple of Kanon, Banjar, Kullu

Old Brahma Temple at Kanon, Banjar(Kullu)

Hi,

How are you doing?

After a short pause of about one month, today I got the opportunity and enough content to post another short travel story on this lovely blog of mine. This is the story of our visit to another Brahma temple, located in the Himalayan mountains of Himachal Pradesh.

As usual, this was a holiday among continuous holidays after the semester off, so on 17th June 2014, Tarun and I started another Kullu Valley trip on his motorcycle, Thunderbird.

Thunderbird was powerful enough to carry us through any steep mountains of Himachal Pradesh. Moreover, it felt safer and stable on the road while riding, and hence a wonderful choice for this mountain ride trip.

The monsoon season is yet to come, but the rainfall in the recent past days was high enough to raise the water level of the Beas River. It is to be noted that NH-21 runs very close to the Beas River, which itself runs on a sloped zig-zag terrain from Mandi to Manali.  

These are the days when the news of the drowning of the Engineering students from Andhra Pradesh is almost everybody's focus. At Pandoh dam, several military and paramilitary men were standing at the same time, some people in other dresses were floating on the reservoir on the rafters. 

They were searching for the lost students, dead or alive. Sorry to put this sad info in here, I know you might not have expected this to be a part of this blog post. 
I wanted to observe, for a while, how the policemen, paramilitary and army personnel, whom I saw combing the boulders and shrubs along the river banks in a search operation for the dead bodies of those 24 students, do such hard jobs.  

This was a time of big remorse for whole nation, but life has to always goes on. Everyone has to do their own piece of work, these policemen can not just pause it and sit and watch the one day cricket series of India - Bangladesh or the late night world cup football matches and similarly we had to move on.

See the water level at Larji Dam Reservoir on 17th June 2014

When we reached Larji dam, we stopped for clicking the dam reservoir, water level was just about to cross the crest of the dam. The gates of the dam were closed  consecutively for recent past 4-5 days. Till today, they had searched 8 dead bodies, and operation was still on. After riding about 5 km on this Salbar to Kanon Kutcha(Gravel) road, bike was parked under a walnut tree.

Afterwards, this was another 15 to 20 minute vertical foot-hike along the village path to reach the Brahma temple of the Kanon. At a home on the way, we drank the water and asked for the path to reach the temple.  People are always ready to help when you go there with the simple intention of visiting the place, not to do the non-sense things, such as drinking or searching for the smoking drugs. We didn't expected what we saw, temple was crowded with another wooden houses of the village.

The gate of the Brahma temple of Kanon, Banjar (Kullu)

There was a wooden roof, held by the four wooden pillars, below which was a ramp constructed for sitting and playing the musical instruments, chosen specifically for worshipping the lord. I think the verandah was spacious enough to occupy the whole village.
Mr. Tilak Raj(villager) was just passing by when we introduced ourselves to him, instantly he was ready to show the temple. Temple walls were colored in sky blue and golden color, constructed with the wood and stone mainly.  He opened the wooden temple gate and led us to second floor which again was made of wood.

A view of Raths of Brahma( to my first left) and Lakshmi(2nd left) at Kanon, Banjar, Kullu(H.P.)

There were two Raths, one of the Brahma and another of Lakshmi. Many parts of these Raths are gold plated and thus makes them precious.
After getting clicked with the help of Tilak Raj we started to descend down. Temple priest, an old man had just arrived. He offered us seats, but feeling fulfilled with the sight and clicks we chose move on to.

Mukhota of Brahma on his Rath at Brahma temple at Kanon, Banjar, Kullu

We learned that Brahma of Kanon goes on Rath Yatras only for the Kullu festivals, but not to the Shiv-Ratri of the Mandi or other districts. Tanu, a girl at temple home(this was also the home for priest) of age of about 10 years was sitting with her Hindi book and felt shy to wave her hand to bade us goodbye.

I always feel joyful interacting with the children, especially while on such a sort of trip to lovely mountains. We were led by Tilak Raj to another adjacent temple, which looked very much older than the first one. He told us that the temple could be 300 years old, but he was not sure.

Again made of wood and stone, it had become dark, maybe due to the weathering action of the water, and the process was still on. Temple was in its dying ages of being able to stand alone, this was the reason that the Brahma was shifted to the new one.

Mr. Tilak Raj(Kanon),joyfully  helped us as volunteer guide(free of cost) at Brahma Temple, Kanon(Kullu)

 We chatted with Tilak Raj for another 10 minutes and learned that the Kanon comes under the Banjar tehsil of Kullu. Village has got the senior secondary school facility, but for the higher education such as graduation in the arts, commerce and business one has to go to the main Banjar town which was located at about 30 km distance by road.

Most of the people of the Kanon village are farmers, being at such high altitude it was possible for them to grow the apple orchards on the mountains. We also observed many apricot trees and field were filled with the green, pulses and tomato plants.
For our earlier another visits to another Brahma temples of Kullu and Mandi districts of Himachal Pradesh, mostly with Tarun please visit the links given below:

• A Visit to Adi Brahma Temple at Khokhan, Bhuntar
• A Visit to Adi Purkha Temple of Tihri-Uttarsal,

I am sure, if you enjoyed this post, you will enjoy the stories within the links given above. 

Thank you for your lovely visit!