India is a country full of stories and unbelievable tales! Today on the blog we have a story on a rather unusual shrine that has it's own significance in a beautiful valley, next to Sikkim's Nathula Pass. Sepoy Harbhajan Singh belongs to the 23rd Battalion of Punjab Regiment and he not only protects the 3,000-odd men of the Nathula brigade who guard the 14,000-feet high border point with China, but also gives our soldier a three-day advance notice of any attack. He sounds like any other dutiful soldier except that he died in 1968.

According to legend, Harbhajan Singh drowned in a glacier while trying to lead a column of mules carrying supplies to a remote outpost. As the first casualty of the 23rd Punjab Regiment in that war, a manhunt was launched to find him. His remains were found after three days and he was cremated with full military honours. The legend further claims that it was Harbhajan Singh himself who helped the search party find his body. Still later, through a dream, he instructed one of his colleagues to build and maintain a shrine in his memory.

Some Indian soldiers believe that in the event of a war between India and China, Baba would warn the Indian soldiers of any impending attack at least the three days in advance. During flag meetings between the two nations at Nathu La, the Chinese set a chair aside to honour of Harbhajan Singh who has since come to be known as "Saint Baba". Every year on 11 September, a jeep departs with his personal belongings to the nearest railway station, from where it is then sent by train to his village in Punjab. A special reservation for the Baba is actually made for him and his berth left empty for the entire journey to his home town every year with other soldiers accompanying "him" so as to reach him till his home. A small sum of money is also contributed by soldiers posted in Nathula to be sent to his mother each month.

This has to be among the strangest shrines in the world that can also be easily dismissed as a mere superstition. But the men in green-who are deployed in the Nathula terrain- swear by baba.

-Story text source here & here.