Guide and overview
on Katra

A 90-minute (50 km) bus ride from Jammu takes travellers to Katra - base camp of pilgrims bound for the highly venerated Mata Vaishnodevi Shrine in the Trikuta hills. From Katra a 12.5 km trek takes visitors to the temple sited at a height of 5,200 feet above msl (mean sea level). En route to the temple, several interesting landmarks and resting points for pilgrims offer spectacular vistas of the plains below. As with several other temples and shrines of ancient India, there’s a paucity of recorded history of the Vaishnodevi shrine. However a geological study of the holy cave which houses the temple has revealed the age of its formations to be over a million years. The oldest recorded reference to the temple is of Guru Gobind Singh’s visit to the shrine in the 16th century. Currently the + more about Katra

A 90-minute (50 km) bus ride from Jammu takes travellers to Katra - base camp of pilgrims bound for the highly venerated Mata Vaishnodevi Shrine in the Trikuta hills. From Katra a 12.5 km trek takes visitors to the temple sited at a height of 5,200 feet above msl (mean sea level). En route to the temple, several interesting landmarks and resting points for pilgrims offer spectacular vistas of the plains below. As with several other temples and shrines of ancient India, there’s a paucity of recorded history of the Vaishnodevi shrine. However a geological study of the holy cave which houses the temple has revealed the age of its formations to be over a million years. The oldest recorded reference to the temple is of Guru Gobind Singh’s visit to the shrine in the 16th century. Currently the shrine is governed and administered by a specially constituted board which has vastly upgraded the facilities available to pilgrims. The provision of resting points, cafeterias, clean and hygienic toilets along the 12.5 km trek route draws legions of pilgrims every year, with the number of visitors having increased from 1.4 million in 1985-86 to 6.5 million in 2004-05. - hide more about Katra