Jammu_The Temple Town

Jammu is called the temple towns for the umpteen number of temple seen every where. This town serves as the base camp for devotees to Vaishno Devi, Tourists and locals to Srinagar and Leh, Ladakh and off course our Troops-who are dispatched all over the valley from here.
In this process not many view Jammu from the tourist angle. We too couldn't see the Bahu Fort (I have seen the photographs they are amazing), An ancient Shiva temple nearby, 'coz we had kept it for the last and then finally missed it.
With Jammu as base we visited lots of interesting places: The Octroi Border, Aaknoor, Vaishno Devi, Patni Top etc.

The Raghunath Mandir in the heart of the town-is a  sprawling temple complex surrounded by the markets full of shops selling dry fruits, carpets, Rajma, Pasmina shawls ets.

Raghunath Mandir                                                                               Pasmina stole on dispaly

The revolving restaurant (KC residency) nearby gives a very good view of the whole city , and serves good non-vegetarian food too.

The one place not to miss, is the war recently constructed war memorial. Constructed atop a hill top- A dagger like structure, surrounded by sprawling gardens and sand stone columns with the names of the Martyrs in the various wars fought by India engraved on them . Come to the Kargill war section and one can see the many familiar names of soldiers. The atmosphere here is very sacred, with patriotic songs in the background-leaves one with goose pimples and a lump in the throat.

An evening view of the War Memorial