How I Travel Across India Documenting Forgotten Temples

How I Travel Across India Documenting Forgotten Temples

A Seeker’s Diary in Search of India’s Lost Sacred Sites

✍️ Rahasyawadi Varunanand Sansari (Mystic Varruna)

In a desolate cave in the Himalayas, where even the freezing wind seems to hold its breath, an old ascetic looked into my eyes and said – “You have not come searching. You have been summoned.” In that instant I understood – the temples the world has forgotten have never forgotten me.

Even past the age of fifty, whenever an unnamed trail in the Himalayas appears before me, my feet begin moving toward it on their own – as if some invisible thread were pulling me forward. This is not adventure tourism. This is tapasya, a penance – a journey I began years ago and one that will likely continue until my last breath: the search for India’s forgotten temples, caves, and sites of siddhi, buried under the dust of time, yet carrying a divine energy as alive today as it was thousands of years ago.

People often ask me why, at an age when most men are settling into comfort, I choose instead to climb higher, walk farther, and sleep in colder places than I ever did in my youth. My answer is always the same – this was never a choice made by the mind. It is a debt owed by the soul, one that grows only heavier with each passing year, and one that I intend to repay fully before my journey on this earth is done.

Where the Journey Began – A Vow, A Penance

My name is Rahasyawadi Varunanand Sansari, but to my viewers and followers, I am simply “Mystic Varruna” – an ordinary man who has given his life to the search for extraordinary truth. This journey did not begin with a plan. It began with an inner call. As a child, whenever I walked past the old, crumbling temples of my village, a strange restlessness would grip me – as though the stones themselves wanted to tell me something, wanted to share a forgotten story.

Today, having crossed fifty, when I look back, I see that the boy who once stood in silence before broken spires and moss-covered idols was, in truth, being prepared for something larger. I remember my first such experience – visiting a forgotten Shiva temple with my father, and the priest there telling me, “Son, this temple is a thousand years old. But no one comes to see it anymore.” That single sentence lit a fire in me that has never gone out.

Years later, when I founded the Varuna Sanatan Siksha Foundation, it became clear that my purpose was never mere religious promotion – it was the revival of the cultural and spiritual inheritance that we are losing in the storm of modernity. This was never a path to personal gain. It is a vow – of service, of remembrance, and of rekindling a light that has lain dim for centuries.

When I took this vow, I made three promises to myself. First – I would never present the story of any site without deep research and verification from local sources. Second – I would always keep a clear line between folk tradition and scriptural evidence, so my viewers are never misled. Third – no matter how difficult the path, I would never leave a search unfinished. These three pillars carry the entire weight of my journey, and I have held to them to this day.

Why the Forgotten Temples Call to Me

When I stand at Ram Ghat in Chitrakoot, or step into the dark caves of Gupt Godavari, I feel something strange – time seems to stop. These are not merely places of stone and water; they are living witnesses to the memories of the sages, the avatars, the ascetics who spent countless years of their lives here in penance.

But in modern India, while millions of devotees flock every year to the large, famous pilgrimage sites, thousands of smaller, remote, little-known temples are slowly slipping into oblivion. Whether it is the Shikari Devi Mandir in Himachal Pradesh, or the mysterious Kamrunag Lake near Mandi – these places are not only geographically difficult to reach, they are also fading from cultural memory. My task is to reach them, to capture their stories on camera, and to carry them to a generation that may never even have heard their names.

The journey to Kamrunag Lake is one of the unforgettable chapters of my life. Situated at nearly 3,300 metres above sea level, this lake – which local tradition links to the Mahabharata’s warrior Barbarik – carries within it centuries of faith and mystery. When I arrived there, I found that the traditions of this place hold their own distinct and ancient dimension, quite separate from the popular Khatu Shyam narrative – a fact very few people know, and one I felt it my duty to clarify in a dedicated video.

Likewise, as I made my way toward Shikari Devi Mandir, every small village along the route offered me a new story from its elders – some said the goddess appeared here during the Pandavas’ exile, others said the site was once the penance-ground of an ancient siddha yogini. I listen to all such stories with respect, but when I present them to my viewers, I always make clear which part is scripturally supported and which belongs to folk tradition.

A civilization that forgets the penance-grounds of its ancestors loses a part of its own soul forever.

The Ten Hidden Gurus of the Himalayas – Whom the World Does Not Know

The most profound, most thrilling, and most mysterious chapter of my travels is the one in which I had the fortune of meeting ten siddha gurus of the Himalayas – men and women who have never appeared on any social media, who have no YouTube channel, no Instagram profile – and yet who carry within them a power that defies description in words.

Reaching these gurus was never a simple task. Some I found in the inaccessible caves of Himachal, some in a small hut deep within the dense deodar forests of Uttarakhand, and some in a forgotten cave in the shadow of the ancient fort of Kalinjar. All of them shared one thing in common – complete indifference to fame. These saints seek no name, no recognition; their sadhana is silent, their power invisible yet dense.

Finding these gurus was never the work of a single journey. It was a search spread across years, across many failed attempts, and many moments when I had to move forward guided only by the silent gestures and vague directions of local villagers. No map, no GPS location leads to these sites – only faith, patience, and that inner summons serve as the guide.

The First Meeting – The Ascetic of Silence

My first meeting took place in a high valley of Himachal, where an elderly sadhu had been observing a vow of silence for twenty years. He did not speak a single word, but when his gaze rested upon me, I felt as though all the noise within me had gone still. His disciples later told me that he had renounced city life decades ago and now serves only as a bridge between nature and the divine. I stayed in that valley for three days, sitting outside his hut in silence each day, and on the third day, as I prepared to leave, he placed a mark of sacred ash upon my forehead with his own hand – his only “word,” and the memory of that touch still fills me with energy.

The Second Meeting – Master of Fire

In a cave in Uttarakhand, I had the fortune of the company of an ascetic whose hut carried no burning fire even in the bitterest cold, and yet remained warm. The local villagers believe he warms the entire cave with the fire of his own tapasya. I experienced this with my own senses – whatever science may choose to call it, the experience was extraordinary. When I asked him how such power is attained, he only smiled and said, “The fire of prana reveals itself only when every desire of the body has been reduced to ash.” That sentence still echoes in my mind.

The Third Meeting – The Yogi Who Speaks the Language of the Forest

In a dense forest near Kalinjar, I met a yogi of whom the local people say he understands the language of birds and animals. As I approached him, the forest birds grew unusually calm and began circling his hut. He said only this to me – “Only one who has stilled the ego within can truly converse with nature.” A deer would regularly visit near his hut, one that shied away from every other human being, yet remained completely at ease in his presence. I captured this on camera, and it remains among the most precious footage I have ever gathered.

The Fourth Meeting – The Ascetic Seated on Ice

My fourth meeting took place at a Himachal altitude where oxygen grows perilously thin. For fifteen winters, he has practiced tapasya amid the ice, wearing only a single thin cloth. The locals call him the “Him-Yogi.” When I asked about his body temperature, he explained that this is a branch of the ancient tummo practice referenced in the Hatha Yoga tradition – channeling the body’s inner energy so that the effect of external cold is minimized.

The Fifth Meeting – The Ascetic Sustained by Water

In a remote ashram in Uttarakhand, I had the privilege of meeting a woman ascetic whose disciples claim she has lived for years on nothing but water and air. This is a claim I cannot scientifically verify, and I urge my viewers, too, to receive it through the lens of faith and tradition, not as established fact. Yet the light in her eyes, the gentleness of her voice, and the profound peace upon her face did not seem to belong to any ordinary way of life.

The Sixth Meeting – The Mantra-Siddha Tantric

In a forgotten cave in the shadow of Kalinjar Fort, I met a tantric practitioner who has spent thirty years in the sadhana of a particular mantra. A strange stillness and fragrance filled his cave, and I could find no clear source for either. He told me that the true meaning of mantra sadhana is not the display of miracles, but the complete stilling of the mind’s restlessness – and that, he said, is his greatest power.

The Seventh Meeting – Ancient Wisdom in a Youthful Form

The most startling meeting in this journey was with a young seeker who appeared barely twenty-five years old, yet whose speech carried a depth of knowledge that seems possible only after years of sadhana. Locals say he is the present bearer of a siddha lineage whose guru-disciple chain stretches back hundreds of years.

The Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Meetings – Mysteries Wrapped in Silence

The stories of the remaining three gurus are so profound and personal that a full account lies beyond the scope of this article, and I will unveil them one by one in an upcoming video series. Among them is a siddha purusha said to have been seen in two places at once; an elderly yogi who has remained seated in one posture for forty years; and a lineage of saints passed from one disciple to another solely by the guru’s command, never made public. I want to be clear here – these are experiences and local traditions, not scientific proof – but in the Sanatan tradition, faith and direct experience carry their own form of proof.

A single thread ran through all ten gurus, one I felt again and again – none of them ever sought fame, never displayed their “miracles,” and never tried to grow a following of disciples. Their sadhana was entirely inward, entirely detached from the world. This is precisely why they are so difficult to find – they do not hide themselves; they simply remain beyond the world’s gaze.

Each of these ten encounters left something with me that no scripted itinerary or planned pilgrimage ever could. There is a particular kind of humility that settles into a person after sitting before someone who wants nothing from you – no donation, no allegiance, no audience. I return from these meetings each time a little quieter, a little more aware of how much noise fills an ordinary life, and how rare true stillness has become in our world.

Chitrakoot – Where the Journey Found Its Direction

If the Himalayas are the calling of my soul, Chitrakoot is the birthplace of my journey. It was here, seated on the banks of Ram Ghat, that I first understood that the energy of a place comes not from its physical structure alone, but from the history and devotion woven into it. In the dark caves of Gupt Godavari, where it is said Ram and Lakshman once bathed in secrecy, I spent hours touching every stone, searching every corner for the shadow of that age.

Circling Kamadgiri, I heard countless stories from local sadhus – stories recorded in no scripture, kept alive only through generations of oral tradition. My visits to Sphatik Shila and Anusuya Mata Mandir taught me that the true history of India is preserved not only in libraries, but in these rocks, these streams, and these aging voices – voices that will soon fall silent if we do not listen to them now.

The Struggle Behind the Camera

This journey, as spiritually enriching as it is, is equally demanding on the body. Walking for hours on impassable Himalayan trails, battling the thinness of the air, keeping camera equipment safe through snowstorms, and often spending days without any network connection, entirely cut off – all of this has become part of the very sadhana I am living.

I remember, on the way to Shikari Devi Mandir, the path was so treacherous that even the local villagers tried to stop me from going further. But the call from within, the unshakeable conviction that this journey could not be left incomplete, kept pushing me forward. When I finally reached the temple courtyard and the golden light of sunset fell upon that ancient peak, every hardship, every exhaustion dissolved in an instant.

Crossing fifty sometimes demands its own physical price – aching knees, breathlessness at altitude, and nights when the body begs for rest while the mind remains restless to move on. But I have found that whatever physical capacity age takes away, it returns in experience, patience, and the spiritual maturity that only years of sadhana can bring. Today I face these journeys with a stillness of mind far greater than I ever had in my youth.

Family – The Source of My Strength

In living out this vast purpose, I am never alone. My family, who understood and accepted this unusual path of my life, is my greatest strength. When I am away from home for months, in some unnamed cave or impassable mountain trail, it is their unwavering support that gives me the faith that this mission will not go in vain.

Very few people understand that being the family of a man whose life is bound to constant travel, uncertainty, and difficult terrain is itself a form of tapasya. The responsibilities they carry in my absence, the worry for the children, the countless moments when they have no idea which cave, on which mountain, I am in – all of this they have borne with quiet acceptance and unwavering faith. This is why, whenever I sit at the feet of a guru, the first feeling that rises in me is gratitude toward my family – for without their sacrifice, this journey would never have been possible.

I have often thought that if these ten hidden gurus represent one form of tapasya – solitary, visible only to those who seek it out – then my family embodies another form entirely: the quiet tapasya of waiting, of trusting, of holding a home together while one of its own walks a path few would understand. Both forms of sacrifice, I believe, are woven from the same thread of devotion.

Where Technology Meets Tradition

In this modern age, with platforms like social media and YouTube available, I have made them a powerful instrument of my mission. Today, through the Mystic Varuna channel, more than five hundred thousand viewers have joined this journey. But for me, this number is never a mere statistic – it is a responsibility. Every video, every article must reach a generation that has been severed from its roots, yet still carries, somewhere deep within, that same spark.

This is why I present every site not merely as a visual experience, but with research, authentic sourcing, and careful examination of local tradition – so that truth and folklore remain clearly distinguished, and viewers can form their own judgment.

I remember that when I published the video clarifying the confusion between Kamrunag and Khatu Shyam, the response from my viewers convinced me that even today, millions of people want to know the true origin of their traditions – they need only an honest guide who offers researched truth instead of misleading claims.

The Road Ahead

This journey is far from over – it has, in truth, only just begun. From Himachal and Uttarakhand, to the Kalinjar region of Madhya Pradesh, to the little-known Shakti Peethas of southern India, hundreds of sites remain whose stories are yet to be written. As long as there is strength in my feet and that divine call remains alive in my eyes, I will continue walking this path.

My dear readers and viewers – if within you, too, lives a thirst to know your roots, to understand the penance of your ancestors, then this journey is yours as well. Join me on the Mystic Varuna channel, keep these forgotten stories alive within you, and become guardians of this vast Sanatan inheritance – for a civilization that protects its memories is the one that remains immortal across the ages.

I am no ordinary traveler – I am a keeper of memory. And this journey will continue until every last forgotten temple of India has told its story.

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