Trip to Shirdi & Shani Shinganapur...

On Friday 9^th February, I went to Shirdi and Shani Shinganapur…

Trip to Shirdi was special to me for 3 reasons: Firstly, I’ve never been to Shirdi. Secondly, since our last Trip to Lonavala I’ve not been to anywhere outside Mumbai, so I was sort of bore with my daily routine and definitely needed a break… Lastly and most importantly, it was the first trip with my team members…

One day suddenly, Hemant and Nishant came up with the idea of going to Shirdi… Few of us agreed to go with them. So, we decided to invite all our team members (both present & ex team members) and I sent the mail invitation to all of them, for our Trip to Shirdi but finally only eight of us (Hemant, Nishant, Pankaj, Pavan, Sumant, Siddhant, Vikas and me) opted for coming on this memorable trip…

On Friday midnight, we left Mumbai and the journey began with fultoo masti & fun… The special attraction of the night was Sumant and his stories of Mumbai, Gujarat, etc… Those stories kept us awake almost the whole night and along with laughter, it brought stomach ache too…

Next morning, one of the most difficult tasks for us was to wake up Sumant… At one point, we decided to let him sleep till the time we comeback from the temple. It wouldn’t be fair if I don’t mention Siddhant’s words here “Yeh sahi hai:- khaya, piya, pakaya aur ab so raha hai… (He is great, he ate, drank, talked and now he is sleeping…)”

Anyways finally he woke up and we did the Darshan (prayers) in the Shirdi Temple… I also liked the museum inside the temple which showcases the photos, portraits of the Sai Baba and various things used by Him…

Later on our way to Shani Shinganapur, we enjoyed the fresh Ganne ka Juice (Sugarcane’s Juice)… It was something which I was witnessing for the first time in my life, that is, Ganne ka Juice taken out by a Kohlu ka Baail (An Ox tied to a lever which is generally used for taking out juices and oils).

For visiting Shani Shinganapur temple, there is a custom that all the male devotees have to first bathe and then wear only a dhoti in order to do the Puja (offering prayers) there, as women are not allowed to do Puja there…

Initially I was a bit uneasy with the idea of wearing only a dhoti but it felt superb after trying something different and that too a dhoti … Actually Siddhant helped me in wearing it in the typical style hence it was looking better…

Later we went to Trimbakeshwar Temple, Nasik; we reached there approximately after 10 minutes of closing time of the temple. Hence we weren’t lucky enough to visit that temple; so only options available to us were to click photographs and do shopping outside the market and we took the advantage of both these options…

On our way back to Mumbai, we halted at Sanskriti Resort for dinner; the setting there was of a typical Marathi Village… We all chose to eat their specialty, the Marathi Thali… The food was delicious and also it tastes yummy, when you are actually eating something for the first time in the day…

Finally we reached back Mumbai around 4 a.m. in the morning…

Before concluding this post, I would also like to mention about few people without whom this trip wouldn’t have been such wonderful: Vikas Bhai who was the trip manager and also took care of the finance department, Pavan for his funny one liner’s, Pankaj who didn’t sleep for more than 1 hour on the whole trip which took approximately 30 hours… And also others who made this trip a memorable one for me…