As few days are left of my stay at Jamnagar, I decided to cover up most of the Gujarat. I visited Guhar Mota, the western most point of India last to last weekend. The previous weekend I had planned to cover Palitana, a Jain pilgrimage in Bhavnagar district. As I was affirmed with my plan, I sought for people who were interested in visiting the place. I got an easy "Yes" from Vivek, a colleague of mine, an enthusiast traveler and every ready to go for a trip , a passionate photographer and lot more ( got to know about his interests few weeks back, a person of my taste); no one else acceded to the plan . So we two only went for the trip. I booked up the bus tickets and packed up my bag.
We left township in the evening, hitchhiked up to Rajkot from where our bus for Palitana was scheduled. We reached Rajkot by 21:00 and our bus was scheduled at 00:40. We had our dinner and sat to watch Cricket on the projector put up at a restaurant. We met a guy, who belonged to our domicile, had a good chat with him and we left for bus station. We caught the bus and reached Palitana Taleti, the place where the steps to reach the temple complex starts. The complex having nearly 900 temples is located on the Shatrunajya Hill and one needs to climb roughly 4000 steps to reach there. The Gulf of Cambay lies in the south of the hill which we could see as we reached the top.
We started to climb by dawn, there was a complete silence and cold wind was rushing in, the ideal conditions to start with. As we ascended, my memories of the Girnar Hills started flashing up and thought if I was not going to encounter any wild animal again. We moved ahead slowly and steadily, photographing all around. The sun rose up while our ascend but almost hidden behind the clouds giving a scintillating view.
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| The sunrise !! |
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| Way to the summit ! |
We reached the top by 7:30, got fresh and took the bath. The temple complex was magnificent and beautiful and the weather there just made our visit a successful one. The temples were marble carved. The hill was surrounded by the clouds and it was lush green all around. We went to one of the temples only, rest we saw from outside and then visited Peer baba Dargah.
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| The Temple Complex |
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| Lush green mountains & Gulf of Cambay |
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| Samovsaran Mandir at the foothills |
We spent nearly 3 hours on the top, discussing about life, trips we wished to make and random things. We started descending and a lot of Zehrappa (in our terms that means clicking photographs in random poses wearing goggles: P) was being spread by us throughout our way to the bottom of the hill. We reached the foothills by 11, visited the Samovsaran Temple and after that we had our snacks and caught the bus to Bhavnagar at 12:30 reaching there by 2 in the afternoon.
In Bhavnagar we first searched for a good restaurant to feast ourselves as we were pretty hungry by that time. We went to Jalsa lounge as per suggested by the Google, had our lunch there and asked the manager what was there to visit in Bhavnagar. After hearing about many places decided to go to Nishkalank Mahadev Temple, located on the sea shore. We reached the beach by a public conveyance. To reach the temple we need to walk through shallow waters, the bed was laden with black soil and it appeared like an inflatable bed spread all around. We moved towards the sea played with water doing random Zehrappa again.
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| Through Vivek's lens at Nishkalank temple |
Returning from there by 8 in the night, we went to the only mall in Bhavnagar. As were sleepy, we planned to watch a movie so as to have a comfortable sleep for 2 hours. After the movie, we caught the bus back to Jamnagar and reached by 8 in the morning.
The visit to Palitana turned out to be pretty awesome. Everyone who are in Gujarat should at least visit it once especially in the monsoon season. It is very rare to find such good destination in Gujarat, which is so scenic and eye soothing. It is worth going. For me, it was a life time memorable trip and moreover, I found a traveler like me whom I can always count in for any trip without giving a thought. Finally I can say, visting Palitana made me realize tha my heart lies in the mountains ! :D
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