The Mata Vaishno Devi Trek is not about the Darshan
What trekking 26km on foot on the Mata Vaishno Devi yatra taught me.
What the Vaishno Devi Trek Taught Me..
(Hint: The trek is not about the Darshan)
If you ask most people why they're climbing up to Vaishno Devi, they'll tell you it's for the darshan. To stand in front of the Mata and feel that moment of connection, pray to her, and get her blessings.
And that's what I thought too, right up until I was halfway up the mountain and realised that the trek wasn't actually about the Darshan.
The darshan isn't the point. It never was. The point is everything that happens between the bottom of that hill and the top, and if you're only chasing the destination, you're going to miss the entire reason you came. The entire reason the Devi called you there.
Whoever designed the nature of this journey (or any other religious pilgrimage on foot) knew what they were doing.
The trek mirrors life in a way that's almost too on the nose once you notice it. It's long. It's uphill. Some stretches are gentle and you barely feel the climb, and then out of nowhere you hit a patch that knocks the wind out of you, and you wonder how you're going to keep going.
Sound familiar? That's basically every decade of being alive.
And then there are the people. Every kind of person you can imagine is on that path with you- rich and poor, local and tourist, people with the so-called high societal status and low, walking the exact same path.
This is where it gets interesting, and a little uncomfortable too-
Some people skip the walk entirely. They take a helicopter, land near the top, and sometimes even get priority access for darshan ahead of people who've been climbing for hours.
Watching that happen, I genuinely didn't know what to feel. Part of me wanted to judge it as unfair, because here I am sweating through switchbacks while someone else floats over the whole thing.
But then another part of me thought, well, maybe they worked just as hard somewhere else in their life to earn that ease.
Maybe this is just what privilege looks like when you zoom out far enough.
Who am I to decide what's fair and what isn't? I don't think there's a clean answer.
And just like that, my judgment melted away.
I think that's exactly the point.
The mountain just shows you, in miniature, the same uneasy questions about fairness and privilege that exist in the world at large.
Then there's the palanquin and pony option, where you pay someone else to carry the load for you.
At first that feels like taking advantage of another person's labour.
But those people signed up for that work because it's how they survive.
So is it exploitation, or is it an exchange both sides chose?
Again, I don't think the mountain hands you a neat answer. It just hands you the question and lets you sit with it the rest of the climb.
What I noticed most about myself, though, was the attitude I carried with each step.
Some moments I felt this genuine lightness, almost joy, like I was walking toward something I loved.
Other moments I felt frustrated and honestly a little hopeless, wondering why I'd signed up for this at all.
And I started to realise that the attitude you bring to a hard climb matters just as much as the climb itself.
You can do the exact same physical task with dread or with devotion, and it changes everything about how it feels and how it shapes your journey, which is the whole point of the trek.. and life itself.
The really hard parts forced a different kind of decision-making too.
Do you stop and rest, or push through?
Do you listen to your body, or override it because you're stubborn?
I came somewhat prepared, but no amount of preparation tells you exactly how your body is going to respond to a mountain in real time.
You learn that about yourself only by being on it.
And when it got truly difficult, when I genuinely wanted to turn back, the only thing that kept me moving was knowing the top existed.
That's such a simple thing, but it's everything. If you don't believe there's a destination waiting, the suffering along the way stops making sense.
Very few people climb a brutal mountain just for the climb itself. We need that knowing, that quiet certainty that there's something at the end, even on days we can't see it yet.
And when it got close to impossible, my legs refusing to hold me up anymore, I did what I think most people end up doing at their breaking point- I asked for help from something bigger than me.
It gave me a strength I didn't have a few minutes before.
I was on the second day of my period too. I dreaded the trek before I started it for this reason, but ended up doing it without any period-related pain or fatigue issues. (Clean bathrooms along the way!)
Even after the trek was over, my body did not break down or need extra rest during the coming days as it should after trekking 26km. I continued on with my travels as if I never did any such thing..
That was divine intervention and I can spot it now because of how many times I've experienced it before.
Or maybe it's just what happens psychologically when you surrender control, but either way, reaching out when you've got nothing left is often the only thing that gets you moving again.
When I reached the top, I expected to receive Darshan (the divine blessings of the view of the Devi Shrine).
But after everything, all that walking, all that reflecting, all that effort, I didn't get it.
Things just didn't work out that way. And isn't that exactly how life goes sometimes?
You can work toward something your entire life, want it with everything you have, and it still might not happen.
What I took from that disappointment, eventually, was that the darshan was never really the assignment.
It came in as a very clear download when I stood outside the door of the shrine with my feelings of disappointment. I prayed to the Devi to get the door opened sooner than the 5 hours that they were telling us.
But the message I received put me at ease instantly: The actual assignment was the becoming.
Who did I turn into over those hours of walking?
What did I learn about my own limits, my own patience, my own ability to keep going when I wanted to quit?
That's the part nobody can take away from you, darshan or no darshan.
There's also something to be said for the sheer amount of time the trek gives you to think.
Walking for hours does something to your mind that sitting still never does.
It moves your energy, it quiets the noise, and it becomes its own form of meditation.
You also have to stay focused enough to outpace your own fatigue, and that focus alone seems to slow your mind down in a good way, like your brainwaves themselves slow down.
And then there's the view. You're on a mountain, so the world opens up around you in a way it just doesn't in ordinary life.
You see how small you actually are against all that scale, and you meet people who pray differently than you, believe differently than you, walk differently than you. It humbles you without even trying.
It reminds you that you're one tiny piece of something enormous, and somehow that takes the weight off your ego rather than adding to it.
So if you go expecting heartbreak because the darshan didn't happen, I think you're standing at the end of the trail still missing what the trail was for.
And funnily enough, the part nobody warns you about is the descent!!
Going down looks like it should be the easy part, the reward after the climb. It is not.
It tested my patience more than the climb up did. It felt endless in its own way, and it quietly chipped away at my ego just as much, maybe more, because I expected it to be simple and it wasn't.
My knees almost gave out around the last 7km of the descent and I chanted both Jai Mata Di and Om Hanumate Namah that gave me spurts of energy & painlessness to keep going.
We kept going, leaned on that same patience and that same higher help, and got through it.
So, the Devi Mata isn't only sitting in that shrine waiting for you. She's already wherever you are, in whatever form you need her in.
So why do the trek at all, if she's everywhere anyway? I think that's exactly the question worth sitting with.
The trek allows you to know yourself at a deeper level, but only if you allow it.
~ Love,
Rio Kashyap