Visit to Jivadani temple, Virar...
For a long time, I have been wanting to visit this temple at Virar - it seemed to be an interesting place, atop a fairly big hill. Finally, Manoj and I made the trip today morning. Left 7.00am from Kharghar, and returned by 4.30pm. Train to Virar, auto to the hill base, and then climb. There was no significant delay anywhere (but for the trains running with interruptions due to trackwork, etc being a Sunday).
We reached the base at about 10.00am. The climb is fairly steep with about 1200 steps (did some approx counting, on the way back). Took about 30 minutes to climb up (with 2 rest periods in between). And then spent about 45 minutes in the queue. The rush was very bad - there were easily around 3000 people ahead of us in the queue when we joined the queue, and the rush was on even when we left around 12.30pm. But good rush management mechanism - with clearly separated queue path, though long winding - and fairly well maintained steps to climb and some roofing above the walk-way most of the distance, made the climb and queueing not bad. We could get good darsan, and then wandered around a bit on the top, and then we heard the arati chanting. Came back to be at the arati - surprised to have an arati at 12.00 noon; but was nice to be there at that time.
The view from the top is nice - the hill is quite high to provide a nice panoramic view of Virar and the hills beyond. Though there were not much in the skyline to see apart from empty land and concrete jungle, and of course, the eroding the hillbase as soil is taken for the construction.
[going to catch the bus; await an updated post sometime soon....]
We reached the base at about 10.00am. The climb is fairly steep with about 1200 steps (did some approx counting, on the way back). Took about 30 minutes to climb up (with 2 rest periods in between). And then spent about 45 minutes in the queue. The rush was very bad - there were easily around 3000 people ahead of us in the queue when we joined the queue, and the rush was on even when we left around 12.30pm. But good rush management mechanism - with clearly separated queue path, though long winding - and fairly well maintained steps to climb and some roofing above the walk-way most of the distance, made the climb and queueing not bad. We could get good darsan, and then wandered around a bit on the top, and then we heard the arati chanting. Came back to be at the arati - surprised to have an arati at 12.00 noon; but was nice to be there at that time.
The view from the top is nice - the hill is quite high to provide a nice panoramic view of Virar and the hills beyond. Though there were not much in the skyline to see apart from empty land and concrete jungle, and of course, the eroding the hillbase as soil is taken for the construction.
[going to catch the bus; await an updated post sometime soon....]