Bhimashankar

Yet another plan was ought to be executed after the excellent Daman trip. Bhimashankar is situated at around 120 kms north-west from Pune. The destination was not so far, so it had to be a one day trip. Fortunately, we were blessed with a holiday on Wednesday 26^th Jan, 2011. No wonder, people crib about holidays on independence and republic day, for the importance of the independence achieved 60 years back is decaying day by day.

We were 10 ready to trip along. There were two bikers and 1 hired Tavera to commute to and fro the destination. The departure time as usual changed from 6.30 to 7.30. Wasting time unnecessarily was not so endurable for some of us, hence the bikers, who were ready since long time, left Pune, bidding ‘bye bye’ to the rest of the group and promised to halt at one so-called-known restaurant on the way, which was later discovered to be non-existent.

The end of January has arrived; still the winter in Pune is unaffected. Though the sun had started shining bright and the moon was still flashing cold in the sky, as we were riding we could feel the cool wind on our hands and eyes, for those were the only parts of our bodies, exposed; rest all covered. Leaving the city part behind, we started climbing the khed ghat. I really appreciate the road for its mere beauty and smoothness. The turns were adorable and great to drive on. Leaving behind Manchar, we headed towards the Bhimashankar. On the way had breakfast with the rest of the group and continued the journey thereafter.

On reaching Bhimashankar I made a long face, watching the fair-like ambiance in the temple area. People huddled everywhere, creating chaos! It seemed to me, as if the whole world has never seen the place till then, and it was the only day they could have visited the place. ‘Never mind’, I said and waited for our late comers to arrive. As soon as they came, we started moving with the crowd to get ‘darshan’ of Lord Shankar. Long queue waiting for their chance, wasn’t unexpected at all. It was easily supposed to take 1 hour or more for our chance to get the ‘darshan’. So it happened too! But, instead of standing in the queue idle, I invested the time in clicking some nice snaps of the beautiful temple.

The temple is definitely a Pilgrim Paradise. The architecture of the temple has to be done by some intelligent group of people. It has 4 sides; at each side of the steeple it had four series of small steeples in descending order. This whole group of total 16 steeples had a common steeple at the top. Other than this, the front hall of the temple, the inner chamber of the temple, were also beautifully carved. A bell, won by Peshva Chimaji Appa in the 18^th century in vasai district, is placed in the temple area. After getting ‘darshan’ we sat in the temple hall chanting ‘strotras’ and had ‘prasada’.

The sun was shining bright in the sky causing the temperature to increase gradually. But the coldness was much enough to protect us from the scorching rays. We arrived at the parking area and started planning the next part. There were some famous visiting points around the temple which could have been visited by us. It was 2.30 pm and this new plan would have taken 2 more hours. Many of us were starving of food and were reluctant to roam for some more time. Some disappointed for missing the wild life part and some were happy for saving their energy, we all left the place, heading back to Pune. All decided to halt for lunch after passing Manchar. The lunch time was obviously shifted from 1 o clock to 5 o clock, causing the hunger to die till then. Just in front of the restaurant, there were stagnant farms of barley offering a nice view for some clicks. As if hypnotized, all rushed there and had fun clicking some funny photos. Nobody could have a single ‘solo’ photo of anyone out there, as everybody wanted to appear in all the photos getting clicked, without missing a single one. With big smiles and laughter on faces we left and got onto the khed ghat again, the marvelous road as I had mentioned earlier. After that the road was quite monotonous. Approximately 250 Kms on bike had surely caused backache and sore eyes. But the pain was worth the fun we had.

There is this one thing to mention about how progressing on technological front helped us in the trip. There were two – three incidents, when the bikers got confused with their position on the road with respect to that of Tavera. The Google maps helped us all in finding out each other on the basis of latitude. We are thankful to Google for that!

Chilling winds in morning, scorching sun in afternoon and polluted air in evening couldn’t decay the fun by even a single percent. The bikers enjoyed the turns and twists on the road, while the rest of the group enjoyed the company they got in Tavera. The holiday was utilized and enjoyed extremely. Looking forward for the next trip to Konkan region now!