Trip to Shirdi and Ellora

In these blog I’m going to share my Shirdi trip which includes Ellora caves and Shani Shignapur.

I have actually planned to visit Shirdi on April 2018, but my cousins were unexpectedly told they are visiting early February. So I have planned to join them from Hyderabad and they are travelling from Vijayawada.

There are 4 stations near Shirdi and most of the trains from Hyderabad reach at Nagarsol station. Distance between following stations to Shirdi are

Sai nagar Shirdi – 3 Kms

Nagarsol – 41 Kms (approx. travel time 1hr through taxi)

Kopargoan – 18 Kms

Manmad – 58 Kms

Since our cousins are travelling from Vijayawada through Narasapur – Nagarsol Express we planned to join them. There are 2 alternates route origin from Narasapur to Nagarsol. One is through Khammam and Warangal (train no. 17213) and another through Guntur (17231). These train operate alternate days in alternate routes.

Day 1:

Our train reached at 8:30 AM on the morning on right time. From Nagarsol we waited for bus for few minutes but it didn’t come. So we planned to book taxi and they asked Rs.100 for each person. After bargain they agreed for Rs.80/- per person. They try to pack more people in one cab so that they can make more money. So make sure you have right bargain with right number of people. I will share my return experience later in these blog.  Total we have 37 people travelling, so we booked 2 toofan (14 each) and one Tata Ace for remaining 9 people. We started our journey at 9:00am.

We booked our stay at Kasi Annapurna Arya Vysaya choultry one month ago, the hotel is meant for our community. The hotel is on main road and 1Km away from temple.  We reached around 10:15 after we had short break for tea and light snack on the way. You can get good roadside hotel on the way. Which is cheap and tastier.

We finished our bath and had our lunch at Hotel. After lunch we started for Sai Darshan. There is lot of change in operation over the years. Now there a lot of facilities and managing the temple very well. From hotel we took the Auto to temple and they charged Rs.10/- per person. After reaching near to temple we handed over our mobiles in temple locker and then put our slippers in bag and handover in another counter.

There are multiple gates for various purpose. And we need to take biometric free pass to enter the temple. There is separate pass for senior citizen, so keep your Aadhar card ready to avail senior citizen pass. Darshan takes 15-20 minutes for senior citizens. We took our free biometric regular pass and entered the gate no.1. Total it took 1 hour to complete the darshan. Even though the crowd is less but we have to go through lengthy route all the way. Once you reach the final stage you will be split into 4 lines, 2 on right side and 2 on left side. So try to be extreme left or extreme right so that you can stay little longer near Sai Baba Mandir. After coming out of Darshan we took Prasad and visited the Sai Baba Museum and you can see the items used by Sai Baba.   We were out of temple at 4:00 pm.

After completing the sai baba darshan we planned for Shani Shignapur trip, we started our trip around 4:30 pm and location is 75kms from Shirdi and it takes approx. 1hr 30 minutes to 2 hours to reach the place. The roads are good and you can get various taxis where they charges Rs.120/- or Rs.150/- per person for to and fro trip. They taxis will stop the vehicle in certain dhaba’s where food is costly and poor quality. So we preferred not to get out of cab even though he stopped for food. I’m visiting the place after 12-15 years and the place gone through huge transformation and come up with proper site. After you get down the cab everyone try to sell many things, but I see people commonly offer oil and few leaves to god. So don’t go by sellers. We completed our darshan in 30 minutes and started return journey to Shirdi. On the way we stopped near road side Vada Pav shop, it was really good. We had vada pav, bread bhajji, pakoda each plate Rs.10/- and everyone had their tea or coffee. After short break we started again and reached Shirdi by 9:00 pm and had our dinner at hotel.

At the end of day 1 we have started looking for Ellora trip on day 2 and finding various travel option. We planned to book 17 seater vehicle. Ajanta and Ellora trip cost around 7800 and we have to start at 5:00am and come back by 9:00pm as the total trip distance is 500Km. since it will be hectic we planned for Ellora trip and they charged 3800/- for 17 seater.

Day 2:

The tour contains Grihneshwar Jyothirlingam, Ellora, Bhadra Maruti (Sleeping Hanuman) and Aurangabad Mini Taj Mahal.        

We are excited for Ellora trip and started completed our breakfast by 8:00pm and waiting for vehicle, around 8:30 am vehicle arrive but it was disappointment. The vehicle was ugly and windows were not proper. So we asked the travel agent to give another proper vehicle or refund the deposit. After much argument we got our refund back. Now we started approaching other travels agents and we were able to book another vehicle. We put condition that if vehicle is not good we will send it back, fortunately we got good vehicle and calm driver.

We started our trip around 9:30am and reached 12:00pm at Grihneshwar Jyothirlingam. The roads between Ellora and Shirdi is not good, there is too many pot holes and also due to late start the air also become hot and our energy started draining.  We completed our darshan of Jyothirlingam and reached Ellora which is just 1 Km away.

Late start has big impact on our journey as we reached Ellora 1:00pm. The entrance ticket is Rs.15/- for Indians and Rs.500/- for Foreigners. No entry ticket for kid’s upto 15 years. There are 29 caves are they are very beautiful and lot of efforts have been put. It’s astonishing to see that the mountain has been converted into wonderful caves. It’s worth visit in life for Indian’s. No one knows how it was possible to build such big caves with ancient tolls. Many people say those caves are not built by humans.

So if you are planning for Ellora make sure you reach by 8:00 am or 9:00am so that you have enough time to visit all the caves. Also make sure you have enough energy as you have to walk for really long. Mobile battery won’t be enough to take photos, so prefer to have DSLR or digital camera.

After Ellora we reached Bhadra Maruthi which is 20 minute drive. The place was good crowd and we waited 15 minutes for Darshan. After Bhadra Maruthi we finished our lunch. The lunch was quite bad and we have to spend huge money for worst food. As always these are fixed places where drivers drop for food as they get their commission and get free food. Moreover people who serve is arrogant.

After that we went to Aurangabad Mini Taj Mahal and it’s now already 6:30 pm. Entrance charge is Rs.15/-. You can’t compare with Taj Mahal but it was built very good, so you can visit without any hesitation. We came back by 7:30pm and our vehicle tire got flat. So we have to wait for 1 hour for fixing the puncture and started back by 8:30pm. We informed driver not to stop anywhere for dinner as its getting delayed and reached 11:00pm midnight. And we had our dinner at Udipi food in main road at Shirdi. The food was good so we planned to make parcel for our train on next day.

Very hectic and tired day, had big impact on starting very late.

Day 3:

My wife got enough energy to have early morning darshan of Sai Baba, she visited the temple at 6:00am and came back by 6:45. We were started packing all our items, our train is at 11:15am 17214 NSL to NS. So we planned to start by 9:30am. We completed the breakfast on road side and visited Udipi hotel for lunch.

On the day of arrival the cab guys said they will come for drop and we were waiting for them. We got 1 toofan (14 seater) 1 tata ace and another tata sumo. They started requesting us to adjust 13 people in Tata sumo which we didn’t agree. We have contacted the other taxi operator and he sent the Force 14 seater for 1200/- from Shirdi to Narasapur. We started at 9:30am and reached 10:30 to Nagarsol. We boarded our return train.

Also note in these route lot of general tickets will board on the reserved compartment and they are arrogant. Also since its entire day journey your entire day will be lost in train with hot air. We reached Hyderabad at 11:15pm and getting cab’s for home at that time was very difficult as well. Somehow we managed to get our Ola & Uber taxi’s after 25 minutes wait. We are all exhausted but we had sai baba blessings and we enjoyed the trip and lo of lessons to be learned and newer experience in life.