Trip To Shirdi From Chennai

We had the opportunity to visit Shirdi in February of this year. I wanted to recount the experiences and the trip details in the hope that other devotees may find this helpful when planning a Shirdi trip. Our trip was a two day trip from Chennai to Shirdi.

Day 1
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We chose to travel by flight due to time constraints. We boarded the Spicejet flight from Chennai to Pune. It was an early morning flight at about 4:30 AM. Later flights can be taken depending upon your travel plans. We reached Pune around 6:30 AM in the morning. As we had booked the trip through a travel agent, we had a car waiting for us to pick us up. We headed to a restaurant called Vaishali for south Indian breakfast at around 8 AM. The breakfast was decent idli-vada, no complaints. We started our onward journey to Mahaganapati Ashtavinayak Temple in Ranjangaon. After Mahaganapathi darshan, we continued our journey to Shirdi. En route, there are not many restaurants. However one perfect stop would be the smile stones motel. It is a clean place with decent food /snacks. We stopped there for a mid morning tea. Here is the website for further details - ::Smile Stone Motel:: Multi-cuisine Motel on Pune - Nagar Road.

We reached Shirdi at approximately noon. We stayed at the MTDC hotel, “The Pilgrims Inn”. This is not a fancy hotel, but a basic one with necessary amenities for a convenient overnight stay.

Advantages of this hotel:
1. It is probably the closest hotel to the temple. The temple is 2 mins by walk. I could hear the early morning arathi next day, it is that close.
2. The price is much reasonable compared to most hotels in the area.
3. The hotel had a restaurant ‘The Neem’ which served vegetarian food. The menu also contained few south Indian items. I can say the food was good, especially for south Indians traveling to the Maharashtra.

Disadvantages:
1. It is an ordinary hotel in terms of looks and upkeep could be better.
2. The bathrooms were slippery.

We checked into the hotel, had our lunch, refreshed and headed to the temple after our tea. We were able to get Baba’s darshan at Samadhi mandir. We visited other shrines of the temple campus and headed back for dinner at the hotel around 7 PM. For further details , please refer https://www.shrisaibabasansthan.org/new/new_eng template_shirdi/shirdi/templecomplex.html

Day 2

Next day morning we went to the temple after breakfast. We had Baba’s darshan again. Due to a large crowd, we attended the Madhyaan arati from the congregation outside the temple with a side view of Baba (Full view on live TV). We obtained Udi prasadam and returned back to the hotel.
We left Shirdi around 1PM and headed to the Shani Shinganapur shrine en route to Pune. It is considered auspicious to offer oil to the presiding deity. Please beware of the oil sellers at this temple. There are many quacks who bribe the taxi driver to stop at a specific shop where they sell ten times the original price. Fortunately, our driver was a nice person who told that this is a common happening here for tourists. The temple website is Sri Shaneshwara,Shinganapur

We reached Pune around 7 PM. We had dinner at Shree Krishna veg court at Viman nagar near the airport. The ambience was good, service was slow, and food was expensive but palatable. Our return flight was supposed to depart at 11.30 PM but was delayed by 2hrs. In retrospect, taking an earlier flight at around 7PM may be a better choice. We reached home at 3AM.

Due our time constraints, we chose to arrange the trip through the travel agency ‘Vasantkamal tours’ based in Chennai. We should say it was very reliable and convenient. All in all, we are very grateful to have been able to visit Shirdi.

 

Thankyou all for your comments ! I am glad that you found this narration informative.