Bhimashankar

Planned Destination : Bhimashankar

Route Info (Pune - Bhimashankar) : Pune - Nasik Phata (Old Mumbai Pune Highway) - Bhosari - Chakan - Rajgurunagar - Manchar - Ghodegaon - Bhimashankar

Dates : 2nd Aug' 08

Info in brief :

1. A spiritual place with one of twelve Jyotirlinga(s)
2. A great place for wildlife lovers and trekkers
3. Not many resorts around, if you are planning to stay check out The Blue Mormon
4. A beautiful drive with clean road and full of greenery
5. Not much sight seeing (If foggy/cloudy)
6. "Just after rains are over" is a good time to go to enjoy this place full of lush greenery
7. Not many shops / restaurants. Pack your own food.
8. Wikimapia link : http://wikimapia.org/#lat=19.0543298&lon=73.5213661&z=13&l=0&m=h&v=2

As soon as I finished up with the last post, I started with this to keep up the promise made in the last post. But I got busy a lot and later on could not find the time and mood to complete the same. Never mind, below is what all I remember from this fabulous journey.

I along with my family made a quick trip to a place called Bhimashankar situated in the woods approx 124 kms away from Pune. Before going to the place I tried to collect info like how to reach, best route, places to stay and eat and places for sightseeing but not much info was available on the net. I checked with few of my friends and one mentioned that it might not be possible to make this trip alone in one single day coz although its just 124 kms but bcoz of the road condition you will end up taking more than 5 hrs on one side alone and then including the time for sightseeing. There are not any good restaurants or dhabas around this place and there is just one good (or you can say the only one) resort, The Blue Mormon, around to stay at.

Although i was anxious to see all the places like Nagphani, the wild jungle, the gupt bhima, but because of being with family decided to make it a single day trip only. We left early in the morning at around 7 am from Pune, touched Rajgurunagar in some what around less than two hours. A signboard advised to take left for Bhimasankar and another to go straight for manchar, i enquired with someone and he was keen to tell me that its better to take route via Manchar as it is comparatively better. Went ahead, crossed some ghat and reached manchar, another signboard advising to take a left turn for bhimashankar. Soon after taking this turn, the road is more or less single, extremely narrow and a up hill drive which signaled that it's time to slow down.

Soon after we reached somewhat top of the mountains the greenery and small waterfalls started to show up. To my surprise the road was really smooth and almost for first time I was enjoying driving in my car, I literally felt like as if I am back in Himachal and driving up & down the mountains. It took some time to reach the top at the base of the temple primarily because of some of halts we made in between to enjoy the weather. It was thankfully not raining (so far).

Some 3-4 kms of road just before reaching the temple is full fledged jungle and pretty dense as well. Road was patchy a lot for this whole stretch and fog was also not helping so I had to slow down to literally some 20-30kms speed limit. Once this patch is over one's land directly at the parking near the temple and then it’s a 5-10 mins walk amidst plenty of shops trying to sell prasad and this and that. You will find such shops almost near every temple. Beware of what you carry in your hand while on your way to temple because of the presence of plenty of monkeys around. The temple is not very huge and is very old; most of its beauty is lost because of tent build up around over the bars to keep people in queue. Inside the temple people are pushed around like anywhere in a big and busy temple.

Once done visiting the temple, we soon started our journey back as we didn't time have much time in hand and no one else was keen on going inside the jungle for any sight seeing. As I started to enjoy my driving again it started raining very very heavily and we had to make a halt at some local dhaba. We feasted on local dish Pithla-Bhakri, enjoyed it a lot and ended up ordering more number of plates than the persons we are, as it was really delicious. After having a special shakkar-kam tea (believe me you really have to mention that in locals here, else you will end up having whole week sugar quota in a single cup of tea) it was time to click some photos and head back home.

It took some time to reach the highway, and man I started to hate myself for being in Pune. Traffic started to show up like anything, and I started to wondered.. Why am I back?

More photos at Picasa - Bhimashankar