This was one long awaited trip that I wanted to make. Once in a year I do it along with my group of friends in the month of August, but this year due to my ill health I had to cancel it with my group last minute in August. It was on my mind that I have to do it before the end of the year and after this visit to Mumbai I am not sure before the end of the year if I would be able to travel back to India or not so I did not want to take a chance and wanted to complete in this visit itself.

This is one of my yearly ritual, which I never miss it and have been doing it since the last 12 years, where in there are 8 temples which are spread out in 2 different states with the furthest one being almost 300 kms away from home. We normally do it in a span of 2 days, but this time due to time shortage and other commitments I had to plan it out in a day to complete to and fro covering a total of 600 Kms. One of my friend was kind enough to drive me through the day.

It is like we have to visit the temples only after sunrise and before the sunsets, so I started at 6 in the morning, first visiting the temples in the city itself and then started moving out of the city. Early morning drive has a very different energy making you feel so charged up. The beauty of Mumbai city is it never sleeps, even if you are out at 03:00 A.M. you would find traffic and people out on the road.

Then we started driving out of the city through the small villages. It was a very sunny day so as the day progressed even the temperature started soaring up, though it was hot it was comfortable and we were moving through our destinations as per the time planned. The drive was beautiful and scenic, all through out the way we had so much of lush green landscapes to look around. Thankfully this year Mumbai had good rains so it has become lush green all around, specially the outskirts of the city where the habitation is not much and there is more of open place.

We reached our 1st destination. It is a very small town called Udwada where we have one of our biggest and oldest holy shrine. I always look forward to visiting this place. This place is at the beach side and offers some good sea food. Staying here overnight is fun, we always do that but this time it was not possible.

Then as we are driving through our other shrines;

This is one of the other Shrine in another small town called Navsari. It is very elegantly made up, it has a beautiful garden area. We are not allowed to carry mobile phones inside any of our temples due to the radiation, thankfully there are some places that are still maintained in the most traditional ways and are energetically healthy.

They were a few of them in the garden but every time I would try to click a picture they would run away, seemed like they were camera conscious..hahaha

As planned before sunset we finished visiting all the Shrines and then started our drive back home, though it was a physically tiring day but it never felt like we traveled so much. The energy after visiting all the shrines was at the top and I was feeling so happy and at top of the world for accomplishing what I had planned. Normally it is very difficult to do this in a day, but the whole day seemed so easily passing by. I feel ecstatic as I write this post.

And the day finally winds up, we drive back home and reached home at around 11 p.m. with fond memories of this trip.