Indian cricketer Virat Kohli visited Baba Neem Karoli’s Ashram Kainchi Dham in Nainital with daughter Vamika today.
Kainchi Dham – Neem Karoli Baba’s Ashram is situated in Uttarakhand’s Nainital district on the side of the Bhowali-Almora National Highway. Dham is a centre of attraction for visitors from different countries around the world.
Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma are said to be great devotees of Baba Neem Karoli. Anushka shared Baba Neem Karoli’s pictures after Virat made a century in September. Both celebrities spent two hours at the Kainchi Dham. Their visit was kept a secret. They left the place with the promise to visit again.
They paid obeisance to Baba and chanted the Hanuman Chalisa and participated in the aarti. The celebrity couple went around the ashram and learnt about its history from Pradip Shah Bhayyu, a member of the temple’s trust board.
Both Virat and Anushka are known to be interested in Indian yogic culture. A few years back, Kohli made news when he revealed the book that brought profound change in his life was ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Paramahansa Yogananda.
Anushka also frequently quotes Baba Ram Dass, an American student of Baba Neem Karoli. It was through Ram Dass aka Richard Alpert, an American spiritual teacher’s satsangs that Baba Neem Karoli’s legends of spiritual achievements became known to the West. Karoli was a devotee of Lord Hanuman. Some legends also hold it true that he was a reincarnation of the Hindu God.
In the late sixties Alpert, a psychologist, was experimenting with psychedelic drugs and its impact on human consciousness. His encounter with Neem Karoli Baba changed the way he looked at the world. It was during the same time that American business magnate Steve Jobs, deeply influenced by Indian spiritualism visited Kainchi Dham Ashram. Many decades later, influenced by Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg also visited Neem Karoli Baba’s ashram in Kainchi.