COVER N.72 - India

Postmark: Ahmedabad G.P.O. Philatelic Bureau - 24-1-22
Posted on the 24th January; received on the 12th February
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I'm now well past the 40 countries mark and some new ones keep falling in. India, fantastic cover Piyush, thank you so much!

It always strikes me that covers from India I see here and there in the internet most of the times seem to have very nice envelopes, and this was also the case. I have written before how much I like the traditional airmail envelopes with their blue white red frames, but this one takes it to another level with the  colourful images of the four pilgrimage sites of Chardam Yatra , two of which are also the subject of the stamps on the cover.

Now, before going any further, I must say that I am totally ignorant in what regards Hinduism (and a lot of other religions), so I did a bit of checking on the internet to grasp what was the meaning of the images on the cover and at first i was misled, because the Chardam Yatra, the four holy pilgrimage sites that any Hindu should visit at least once in a lifetime, the Four Abodes, are are Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram. Of these four, only the first is included in  the images on the cover, so I dug a bit deeper and found that Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath are the Chota Chardam, meaning the four small abodes, that is to say a smaller pilgrimage circuit, but none the less important in Hindu tradition, linking temples that are located in mountainous and not easy to reach locations,  that nevertheless attract thousands of visitors each year, in spite of the often hazardous journey (this quote I took from Wikipedia tells it all, I believe: "Mortality rates for a season often surpass 200")...

Stamps:

Both stamps are part of a four stamp set issued on 19NOV2019, dedicated to the Chota Chardam sites. The 10 Rupee stamp depicts the Yamunotri temple,  located in western Garhwal Himalayas at an elevation of about 3,291metres. It is devoted to goddess Yamuna, that also gives her name to the second most holy river of India, that springs from Yamunotri.

the 15 Rupee stamp features the Kedarnath temple. Located on the Garhwal range of the Himalaias.it is dedicated to the god Shiva.

These beautiful stamps were cancelled by a postmark from the Ahmedabad Philatelic Bureau, a place very far from the sites they promote.