Planning
As planned, we all decided to go by car from Pune. I thought of driving the car myself around 500 kms.
There are two options of going to Shirdi (a) via Nasik and (b) via AhmedNagar. (Wikimapia) Reading on various websites, I came to know that AhmedNagar Road is bit lengthy but is very smooth.
Saturday morning we had to wake up at 5:00 am and leave home by 6:00 am.
Way to Shirdi from Pune
We all started in the morning by 6:15 am (we were late by ONLY 15 minutes). There was still darkness around (it is obvious in January last). Within few minutes, the car was on AhmedNagar highway. By 7:00 we were crossing KalyaniNagar. Great !! The road was good.
The sun had started to show its glory on us. By 8:45 am we stopped for Petrol and snacks just before AhmedNagar. We resumed our journey again at 9:15 am towards AhmedNagar. After enquiring for the Manmad road, which comes taking left turn from "Chowk", we were on the highway to Manmad. By 11:15 am we had reached Shirdi.
At Shirdi
Lot of guys pounced upon us asking us to park our vehicle. Actually ,they were trying to allure us to buy "phool maala" for Sai Baba, which we refused. After parking the car (Rs. 30/-), one of the phool-maala guy took us to Gate No. 4, but there was not a big entry.. There is a direct entry for all near the main highway itself. We should have caught the line there itself. We had brought our cameras/mobiles, which were prohibited in the area. hence we have to deposit them in the locker (2/- per camera/mobile) . It is near to Gate No. 4 !! We should have better kept them in the car.
Darshan
We were in the queue at around 11:45 am. This was our mistake as the aarti starts at 12:00 noon. Hence we were in the queue for around 2 hours !!. Many people were rushing and breaking the line. There was a part of mismanagement seen here. My small kid (4 months) started crying and we have to be separated out.
After being in round in 1 room and then in another, going the steps down and again going the steps up, we finally reached the "Samadhi Room", where we had darshan of the baba. It's so much relaxing after reaching the room. We took some prasadam from the holy place. My watch showed me 2:15 pm and that was the time, we all decided to move to Shani Shingnapur (Some pronounce as Singnapur). Feeling the urge of mouses inside the stomach, we paused at a hotel enroute to AhmedNagar. It is around 2 kms from Shirdi Sai Baba's temple.
To Shani Shingnapur
At around 3:00 pm, we continued our drive towards AhmedNagar. To go to Shani Shingnapur, around 40-50 kms from Shirdi towards AhmedNagar, there is a road which goes to Shingnapur. At such heated condition (when the sun started burning), we paused for a cold sip of "Sugarcane juice". We continued towards Shani Shingnapur. There was no problem, as there were lot of milestones. We reached Shani Shingnapur at around 4:45 pm
Similar to Shirdi, again lot of guys pounded over the vehicle asking to park the car in their areas. Again the reason was that to visit the holy place "properly", we need to take the bath and go in just one orange cloth. They would like to charge highly for it. But as we had to return the same day to Pune, we parked the car and visited the temple. While returning from temple, we took prasad (delicious barfi).
Back to Pune
By 5:15 we had left the Shani Shingnapur, and moved to Aurangabad highway to reach AhmedNagar, Aurangabad- AhmedNagar Highway is very beautiful and the car can speed up to 100 very easily. We reached AhmedNagar by 6:00 pm. Took a small break at AhmedNagar, and then continued towards Pune. Pune was 118 kms.
By 8:00 pm, we were at the Wagholi and by 9:30 pm, we were at home eating holy prasad and quickly-made-dinner. That's all for the trip.
I enjoyed the driving of around 500 kms. Sometimes above 100 kmph and fewer times because of bad stretch of the road
But the two best thing was that we
(1) Visited Shirdi Sai baba and Shani Shingnapur to get their blessings.
(2) Long drive of around 500 kms in a single day !!
May God Bless All !!
Shirdi Sai Baba ki jai !!
Enjoy !!
Adhir Garg
