Soon as Visvamitra ended his thousand-year penance lord Brahma conferred the status of a Rishi on Visvamitra.The Rajarshi however continued his austerities with renewed vigor, as his goal was yet to be achieved. Many more years passed and one day it came to pass that, Menaka the most beautiful of heavenly nymphs came to bathe in the Pushakara lake. Visvamitra beheld her whose beauty dazzled like a streak of lightening among dark rain clouds. Smitten by her charms and bewitched by her beauty Visvamithra invited her to live in his hermitage and Menaka consented.

Ten blissful years passed by before Visvamitra to his woe realised that he had been deluded. Filled with remorse, immersed in sorrow, he reflected in anger as to how he had been lured away and distracted from his great austerities by the gods. He lamented aloud "Blinded by my passion, ten years have passed but like a day. I am indeed a victim of my own infatuation"! Determined to set right the wrong that he had committed, Visvamitra sent away the frightened Menaka with kind and gentle words.He then set out towards the mountains in the north resolving to subdue his passions and taking the vow of celibacy.In order to control his senses, Visvamitra performed unrelenting austerities for a thousand years on the banks of the river Kausiki.

Alarmed at his penance the gods and the sages implored Brahma to declare him a Maharshi but that proclamation a brought neither joy nor satisfaction to Visvamitra. Bowing down to Brahma reverently he asked, "Aspiring to be a Brahmarshi, I have performed immeasurable austerities but I am now declared to be only a Maharshi. "Does it infer lapses?" and Brahma said, "Yes, you still have to master your passions, strive on".

Visvamitra once again started on his rigid penance. Living on nothing but air, standing without support, he practiced the most rigid of austerities all day and all night amidst the five fires in summer, out in the open during the monsoon rains and under water in winter. The devatas were once again alarmed at the ferocity of his ascetic's penance asked. They Rambha the celestial nymph to entice Visvamitra so that he would be distracted and end his penance.