Drive to Shirdi

Its been quite some time since we have gone on a long drive. This thought has been urging me to go on one and this time we went to Shirdi, an exact 200 KM drive from my parking. Quite contrary to what we thought about the condition of road, it surprised us with the newly laid tarmac. It took us about 210 minutes to drive to Shirdi and was never a tiring journey. A lot of credit goes to my car for the driving pleasure it offers.

08-May-09_7:30 AM - Left from our home. Reached Shirdi by about 11 AM and checked into a hotel. Apart from the temple visit, i was also looking forward to some authentic Andhra food available. All those yummy onion dosas and thalis activate my taste buds instantly. We had a darshan in the afternoon and it was pretty fast and satisfactory. Then we had a short nap and went again for darshan and this time it was arathi. Again, this went on very smoothly.

09-May-09_7:30 AM - Today was the big day as it was my first love's birthday. We went for a early morning darshan at 3:00 AM and it was a very good experience for us. We could feel all the early morning freshness and spiritual enchanting which was very enlightening. We actually had plans of going to either Nagpur or Aurangabad but had to stop because we had to attend a puja ceremony at 13:30 PM. This was Sai Vrat which is done by almost every couple very frequently. It was a very short one and done very crisply. Then we had lunch and headed back to Pune. The journey back was also very exciting as we were on the right kind of road by twilight.

The road to Shirdi from Pune Via Ahmednagar was good and newly laid. So all those people who are planning to go on this trip can look forward to some good driving experience right through the heart of Maharashtra, Sugarcane fields. An occasional stop for freshly squeezed sugar cane juice on road side is highly recommended. A nice photo shoot near the wind mills will add to your memories in your photo album.