A trip to remember

There are so many thought's I have on this trip that there will surely be many posts that come out of it if I find the time (surely there'll be pics posted to this blog). The train journeys were long and amazing. A bit deary on the last one back to Hyderabad but a lot of fun nonetheless. Travel in India had primarily been for temple visits since I went to the States and having a fun trip to Mumbai was a welcome change.

The itinerary was quite simple actually. First stop Shirdi for 1 night and then Mumbai for 2 days and 2 nights. The darshan at Shiridi was successful and though there a decent sized queue leading to the diety, it is nothing compared to what we are used to in Tirupati. Shiridi is still has a long way to catch up to Tirupati in terms of cleanliness for a place of worship. Hope this happens soon. The surprising thing was to see the number of Telugu people there. One of the taxi drivers confirmed our suspicion that most of the people found at Shiridi on weekdays were in fact from Andhra Pradesh and the local Maharastra folks visit the place mostly in the weekends.

One of the highlights of the entire trip was the drive from Shiridi to the Manmad station. The drive along the western ghats was one to remember. Along the drive, we came  across this place which was famous for kite flying (don't remember the name of the place). There was a statue of a person flying a kite in the town center and a good number of kites in the air as this visit was close to Sankranti  festival. Was a fun drive overall. From Manmad we went to Mumbai (Dadar station) and stayed in a  hotel close to the station.

Mumbai Darshan

We spent 2 days in Mumbai and one of the days was spent visiting places of interest. We first went to Gateway Of India (obviously) and took a boat to Elephanta caves from there. The caves were quite nice and the huge five headed Shiva statue was quite a stunner. You can see 3 faces of the deity and the 4th one is facing the wall. The 5th face can't be seen by mortals and was never carved. Most of the statues there were for Lord Shiva in various avatars. Was a very nice trip there to see the magnificent ancient Indian sculptures.

From here we went to Chowpati beach and spent a little time there. It was quite hot that day and it wasn't a good time to be there. We did have fun by eating Gol Gappa, Pav Bhaji, Samosa Ragada and some Kulfi's there.The beach was full of folks flying kites and was a pleasant sight to see the colorfully dotted sky. Next, we headed to the Hanging Gardens. Apparently, the name comes because the garden "hangs" on top of a big water tank. There wasn't anything special about the garden itself but we went at a great time there, right around sunset. The cool breeze helped us relax a bit and we decided to call it a day from there.

The following day we went to the Siddi Vinakaya temple for which we had to hurry because of the solar eclipse (apparently temples close during the grahan time) and from there went and shopped at the Palladium Mall. The mall was terrific and the best that I have ever seen in India (better than anything in Hyd). Its grandeur wasn't lost of the prices there and we ended up buying almost nothing from there (except some small jewelery shopping). After that we went to West Dadar and did our actual shopping. I am not good at bargaining and so didn't really have fun doing street shopping but it was fun for Sis and Mom.
And that was the fun week long trip for this India trip. Was different experience from my India trips thus far and was a lot of fun. Wish I had more time to do this again soon :)