Kashi- The City of Ghats

  Before we describe our tour incidents, let you know about the Somnath Jyotirling. It has an ancient history. It is known as one of the 12 Jyotirling as per Hindoo mythic. Jyotirling means the sacred shrines of Lord Shiva. It has a strategic location, at Veraval district of Gujrat State on the south west coast of India. It is an important Pilgrimage and tourist place. The temple is constructed some time in BC or even prior to that. A king Nag Bhatta has renovated in 815 AD was the third time of reconstruction.  Malwa Queen Ahilyabai Holkar also participated in constructing this temple.   It has good architectural fragments. As schedule, we have vacated our rooms at Hotel and started our journey to Somnath via Porbandar. We had our lunch during journey at Dhabha on state highway for our Lunch, a mouth watering Gujarati Thali and reached Somnath at 4 o’clock in the evening. The hotel was already booked at Maheshwari Bhavan. This is managed by trust and really decent Dh...

  Solanpada.... A short  Road Trip Karjat ..my home town.. situated 100 kms from  Mumbai and approx. 95 kms from Pune. Surrounded by the wide Sahayadri mountains lush greenery, plenty of  waterfalls and a beautiful atmosphere during monsoon. Solanpadapprox. 22 kms from Karjat is a beautiful waterfall located in the lap of nature surrounded by mountains. Actually it's a man made dam in steps format. (See the pic below). (Pic courtesy.. Google) The Dam is situated at  base of the mountain range. The mountains range  looks like a horse shoe shape from the dam side. On the one side of these mountain range you can see the Bhimashankar mountain area, as one of the Trek to Bhimashankar mountain starts from the nearby village,  Khandas.  There are several small waterfalls around this dam. Water from these falls forms the  backwaters of the dam and  flows down these steps. The steps are well built in concrete and each step is not more than 4 or 5...

  Travelling is my hobby. It is inherited from my parents. India is largest country and it has various destinations east to west and north to south. Gujarat is one of my favorite state, where I have visited number of times for family programs. But it is not a part of travelling. I have travelled Gujrat 3 times and would like to travel again and again. In Jan. 2020, it was a opportunity to lead a group of families, willing to visit south west Gujrat for religious purpose. I have planned accordingly. A trip started from Mumbai Central and end to return to Pune , considering the availability of railway frequency and other matters. I have selected to travel by Saurashtra mail from Mumbai Central to Jamnagar which is the longest journey but it is little bit comfortable as most of journey time passed during night and no one got bored of the travelling. There are two types of journey. 1. Mumbai to Ahmedabad and then by bus up to Dwaraka. But it is time consuming and tiring. 2. Mumbai ...