Baijanath Mandir, Baijanath

053/366 Introduction to Baijanath, Himachal Pradesh would have been more apt during Dasara.

Baijanath is located on the banks of River Binwa (tributary of River Beas) in Kangra Valley. This place is to the east of Dharmashala. Baijanath town has famous temple of Lord Shiva - Baijanath/Vaidyanath. This temple has many scripts written in 'Sharada' style and it depict that 'Baijnath' was earlier known as 'Keeragraama'. As per the script, this temple was built in 1204 A.D.
Temple built in typical North Indian Nagar style, has 'Vaidyanath' as main deity. West facing temple contains 4 pillars in the center. Attractive idol of Ganesha is on to the left of main entrance. Temple wall contains attractive statues of Subramanya, Kali, Parvati etc.

I would like to share on interesting info about this town.
Most of us are familiar with 'Rama-leela' event performed during Dasara festival in North India.This is an event in which, people create dummy idols of Ravana, Kumbhakarna & Meghanada and burn them to celebrate the destruction of evil. But this town does not celebrate this, because people belive that, Ravana did penance in this place to please Lord Shiva. Couple of times, people of this town tried to break this custom by attempting to start 'Rama-leela'. But, each such event ended up in some kind of mishap. Hence, people stopped celeberating 'Rama-leela' here.

Baijanath, surrounded by hills is indeed an interesting place to visit.

Oldest fort of India - Kangra

039/366 Oldest fort of India - Kangra

Kangra Fort is believed to be Oldest fort in India.

Katoch Dynasty ruled from a town called "North Trigartha" (new name supposedly, Kangra).
Kingdom of Trigartha gets mention in Mahabharatha as well.
Katochs said to have ruled regions of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal, parts of Jammu up to Multan(Pakistan).
Trigartha gets its name with land of three rivers - Ravi, Beas & Sutlej.

Kangra fort gets mention by Greek emperor, Alexander(4th century BC).
Fort is very strategically built between two small rivers and was considered tough to capture.

In Indian history, Kangra was considered as very important place for power in this region.
Hence, this place was conquered by many famous kings - Md. Ghazni, Md. bin Tughluq.
Akbar never succceed to capture this fort despite many attempts, but his son Jahangir finally conquered this place.
After Mughal decline, power was back to Katoch family but they lost to Ranjit Singh of Punjab while attempting to expand their kingdom.
After Sikhs, this place was occupied by Britishes.

In 1905, earthquake hit this place and heavily damaged this historic fort. Currently fort does not have any major structures.

Pic depicts wall of Laxmi Narayan Mandir, located in the fort.

Kangra is located 17km from Dharmashala & 220km from Shimla, Himachal Pradesh

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangra_Fort
http://123himachal.com/kangra/fort.htm
http://himachaltourism.gov.in/post/Kangra-fort.aspx

Floral bed @ Himachal

038/366 This lovely view was spotted in one of the villages of Himachal Pradesh. Yellow flower bed is off Mustard plant (remember Sarson Ka Saag???).
Those trees standing in between are Apple trees. We were not lucky to pluck apples from trees since it was off season.