The most common place visited by Delhites on a 2 to 3 day holiday is Vaishno Devi. The reason being, its proximity to Delhi, the cool weather of Katra, adventurous trekking and the religious fervor. But this certainly does not mean that people from other parts of the country do not come. Often they outnumber the people from Delhi. Since I have stayed in Jammu for about a year, I know for sure that Vaishno Devi is mist visited by locals on the weekend due to which it often becomes quite a rush at that time. So if you wish to avoid the rush plan something mid week rather than a weekend. Also during navratris, the place is swarmed by people from all over the country which means a norma person might have to wait for almost 2 days before having the darshans.
I hae been to Vaishno Devi thrice and my last visit was amongst the fastest and best. We started Delhi on Monday evening by a hired taxi. Once you hit the GT Karnal road, the drive is fantastic and you hardly need to put your foot on the brake. After a light dinner at Samalkha, we continued our journey. The driver was keeping up good speed and we reached Katra early morning. We went to a hotel that had parking facility, got fresh over and went for breakfast. Since this was in the month of April, we did not find much rush and started our journey almost immediately. My parents took ponies that are easily available from Baan ganga to the main darbar. Me and my kid sister decided to walk the entire distance. The weather was cool and we were enjoying our trekking experience. A new addition that I found this time was that a by pass has been created about a kilometer before adkumari. This path is not as treacherous as the precious one and also it has a battery operated vehicle plying towards the main darbar. The vehicle charges 100 rs. Per head and allows only 10 people at one time. Also at any point of time there is only one such vehicle plying in either direction.
We reached the darbar at about noon, took a quick bath and went for darshan. We had our lunch there itself and then started the trek downwards.
We reached back Katra in the evening. By this time the driver was also refreshed and ready to drive. So we started our journey back to Delhi in the night and reached home early morning this making it our fastest visit to the holy shrine