The plan was to visit Mahalakshmi at Kolhapur and cover nearby holy places including Pandarpur & Tuljapur.
Preeti's childhood & best friend Deepali stays at Kolhapur and she helped us plan the visit to Kolhapur in detail.
Considering the long weekend from Friday, 29th Sep (Dussera) to Monday, 2nd Oct (Gandhi Jayanthi), we expected huge crowd at all the three places.
I tried online darshan booking at Pandarpur, but no slots were available. We assumed Tuljapur would be less crowded as Dussera would have concluded.
As Solapur is a bigger town and easily accessible to both Pandarpur & Tuljapur, we planned to stay for the first half at Kolhapur & make Solapur as base to visit other two destinations.
Booked Sri Sri Executive Lodge at Kolhapur, and Surya International at Solhapur through MakeMyTrip, which proved to be economical and worked out much cheaper than the Hotel rates.
On Fri, 29th Sep we started at 11:00 AM in Srinidhi's Innova after finishing Ayudha puja at home & office.
The entire Bangalore seemed to have hit the highway & made plans for the long weekend, as each Toll took about 30 minutes to cross upto Tumkur.
All the hotels along the highway were jam-packed and couldn't find space to even park the car, forget finding a table to sit.
The roads freed up a bit after Tumkur. With a lunch break at a Dhabha near Ranebennnur, and a coffee break near Belgaum, we finally reached Kolhapur by 09:30 PM covering 620 KMs.
It was a pleasant weather through out the journey, with cloudy skies, green cover and mild rains making the journey enjoyable.
Sri Sri Executive Hotel was decent hotel accommodation and the small restaurant served tasty food. Deepali & her husband Kedar visited and welcomed us as soon as we reached the hotel.
Next day morning, we were all ready in traditional attire, as Deepali accompanied us to the temple.
Our hotel being within 10 minutes walking distance to the temple, helped us maneuver easily.
The temple premises was very divine and the energy could be felt.
Deepali had contacted the local priest and had made arrangements for our visit to the temple.
The priest came around 08:00 AM and helped us prepare for Puja (Sari offering) & darshan.The priest helped us enter the sanctum sanctorum with ease, beating the long Queue. We had a good long darshan of the goddess Mahalakshmi.
After a good darshan, we were led to the Puja hall to carry out Abhisheka & puja. Our visit to the temple was made more pleasant with all the priests & staff being very helpful, calm and explaining all the Puja procedures with a smile on their face.
We were taken inside the Sanctum Sanctorum for yet another good closeup darshan.
We concluded a fulfilling morning temple visit with each of us getting out of the temple with happy faces.We headed straight to Deepali's house by 11:00 AM for breakfast. We were welcomed by Kedar, his mother & granny. We were served with delicious traditional Marathi food (Misal Pav) & lots of sweets.
We spent good time with Deepali's family and headed back to hotel to relax for couple of hours. Preeti stayed back to spend time with her friend.
We were up, fresh & ready by 3:00 PM and the ladies set out for a shopping marathon. The ladies spent 2 hours just on one long stretch of road filled with Kolhapur Chappal.
After gruelling time for me & Srinidhi walking along with them & holding bags, the ladies came out happy with loads of chappals.
On the lines of Mysore Dasara celebrations, the Kolhapur royal family is the main attraction of the festivity, along with the processions.
After 1 more hour of shopping of some Masalas & Jewellery (Kolhapur special) we went to the temple again for a evening darshan.
Kedar joined us and took us around the food streets of Kolhapur. We had some yummy Kolhapur customary items - Bhel, Vada pav, Dhabeli.
We concluded the eating spree with a famous Ice cream parlour to have their speciality - Cocktail. The ice cream here is supposed to be prepared in-house with buffalo milk.
Deepali & Kedar were perfect hosts & made our visit to Kolhapur a memorable one. Kolhapur weather was very pleasant as well as it was couldy through out the day and mild showers every now & then.
Next day morning, we checked out of Kolhapur and set out our next destination - Pandharpur.
We started by 07:00 AM and reached Pandarpur by 10:30 which is of around 170 KMs.
We were aghast to be welcomed by a sea of people. We barely could walk and reach the main temple premises. A quick enquiry at the office made us realize it's an easy 7 to 8 hours for Darshan.
Srinidhi meanwhile met a local agent who promised a quick Darshan. With a handsome fee, we literally in front of the Lord Vittala within 20 minutes.It was a spellbound experience to be touching the feet of Lord Vittala.
Contrasting to Kolhapur's weather, it was harsh sunny day at Pandharpur, which drained us out.
We finally made out of the temple, and drove out towards Solapur which is around 75 KMs and covered in 1.5 Hours.
We reached the hotel by 2:30 PM, and had traditional Maharashtrian style lunch.
After a quick rest, we headed out to Tuljapur which is another 1.5 hours from Solapur.
We reached Tuljapur to have darshan of Amba Bhavani. As we were all tired, we quickly got hold of another local priest to have quick darshan & Puja.
The entire town of Tuljapur is on a hillock and the temple is accessed through a small climb through a cave.
The ladies did Sari Offering for Amba Bhavani as well.The idol of the goddess was literally put to sleep, as the belief is that the goddess will rest after 9 days of festivity.
We drove back to our hotel at Solapur and rested for the night.
Next day morning, after a sumptuous breakfast at the hotel, we headed our long journey back to Bangalore via Bijapur, Hospete. The stretch between Bijapur & Chitradurga was as bad as one could imagine.
The entire stretch was being upgraded to 4 lane and it was so painful to travel on this stretch. The only respite was the beautiful Thungabadhra reservoir at Hospete.
Jyotsna's fluency in Marathi helped us communicate well with the localites and at the hotels.
It was a memorable, refreshing, blissful & spiritually fulfilling trip.
