A day with my friend!
Being there, hubby suggested we go visit the Ghrishneshwar Jyotirling. My friend and her family joined in too.
It was a 20-min drive. We reached the jyotirling. Phones aren't allowed inside the shrine so we kept them in the car. It wasn't too crowded and we were able to have the darshan in around 15 mins. We went back to the parking. Aunty suggested we drop them at Ellora caves. Looking at the time, it wouldn't have been enough for them to visit the caves. We were planning to go to Shirdi, offered them to join us and they agreed. We took the Samruddhi expressway which was fairly vacant. We reached the parking by 6:15pm (around 1.5 hours). We again left our phones in the car. We reached near the gate, and got uncle aunty seated on a bench. Husband went to get the darshan pass and in the meanwhile me n my friend went to get some tea for all of us. All of us assembled back at the bench where uncle aunty were seated and had our tea before getting into the queue for darshan.
The queues are well managed there. An expecting lady felt uncomfortable while inhe queue so she moved out of the queue to feel comfortable. Her husband followed. She took an available seat nearby while he tried to make her drink some water. Everyone was just lookinh at what was happening with nothing that could be done really. It suddenly stuck us, my friend had something in her bag that might help her. We passed it on to her which helped her stabilize a bit. We progressed ahead in the queue and were soon in the main darshan hall. Surprisingly, not too crowded , we had a very good darshan!! While we were in the queue for the prasad , they handover a packet of prasad and a packet of vibhuti(ashes of baba's dhuni).
It was my friend's first time there. She asked for an additional packet for vibhuti which the volunteer politely declined. While we were exiting, a policeman stopped us. He gave us another packet of vibhuti and told us an interesting story as well. We then went on to visit Dwarkamai.
After an amazing visit, we stepped out of the temple and proceeded towards Udipi express for dinner. They serve amazing South Indian dishes. We had our fill. We used to have our lunch together at office a few years back, before our paths changed and now we were a bit re-living the same experience with a separate set of people around. We shared from the same plate and it was happiness. We booked a cab for their family to go back to Aurangabad. While we waited for the cab, we took a little stroll around and stopped by for a paan. I am a sweet paan lover. We asked the shopkeeper to make one for us. She was having fun and clicked some pictures while I relished my paan.
The cab had pulled in by the time we came back. We had a hearty hug , greeted uncle aunty for an amazing day together and bid adieu to each other. They were on their way back to Aurangabad and we on our way back home in Pune.
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