Zindagi Everyday

After visiting Shirdi, next day we planned a little bit of Mumbai sightseeing as kido also got well, thus thought of making the full utilization of the limited time we had in our hands. For the sightseeing we hired a INNOVA cab which charged us 3000 Rupees for the whole 12 hours. We couldn't use the full 12 hours, but then also it was worth it as the comfort, and driver both were great.

Beginning the Mumbai Darshan, we boarded the cab from Mira Road, and then decided to visit Juhu beach first. This was the first visit of my families to Mumbai excluding me. The juhu beach contrary to my expectations, was clean, with people jogging, enjoying the morning there. The water is as usual dirty, but the shore is clean. Family enjoyed the beach as it was their first experience to sea beach. We proceeded towards the Pavbhaji shops of the Juhu beach.Enjoyed the pavbhaji , and it was simply superb. After long time my taste buds got satisfied with the real Mumbai pavbhaji taste. On the eve of Good Friday, a beautiful sand art of Lord Jesus was made at the beach.

Sand art of Lord Jesus at Juhu beach

After Juhu, we headed towards Bandra. Lucky for us that being a weekend there was not much crowd and traffic on the roads. But yeah heat is always scorching in Mumbai. We reached Bandstand, Bandra. On the way was Shahrukh Khan's house 'Mannat'. You can see people clicking pics outside of the bungalow gate. Really its a huge bungalow !!
We reached the Bandstand at Bandra. It is just near the hotel TAJ, and the Bandra Fort. There is a well maintained garden known as 'Lands & Garden' where you can obviously see so many couples chitchatting. Yeah that's the most famous place for couples in Mumbai ...the 'BAND STAND'.
This fort is attached with the Bandra Fort. Though we didn't climbed up to visit the fort, but one can visit it too. Right from the Bandra Fort premise, the Bandra Worli Sea link is visible so clearly and so close.

The Bandra-Worli Sea Link, Mumbai

Lands & Garden, Bandstand Mumbai

Bandra Fort, near TAJ Hotel

BandStand

After BandStand, we visited SiddhiVinayak temple @ Dadar taking the Sea Link route, and it is really awesome.Kido seeing all the water around started saying 'Mumma Goa', the water reminded her of Goa both at Juhu and Bandstand.
 Due to the Lunar eclipse, not much of crowd was there, and we can get the darshan of ganpati within few minutes. Then we headed towards the MahaLaxmi Temple. It is a bit interior from the main road, just near the sea. Same here, not much crowded, no offerings to the goddess due to eclipse, so we finished our darshan within minutes. Visited Haji Ali on the way.
This was our last sightseeing spot. As per our train bookings, we reached to Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) station, and dropped the rest of the family members there. Then headed to Mumbai Central (BCT) railway station to board the train.

Our Mumbai- Shirdi trip ended here. Though tired but everyone enjoyed the sightseeing.All felt good in Mumbai. Our trip successfully ended with everyone contended and smiling.

The last week we had an awesome trip to Shirdi, and enjoyed the partial Mumbai darshan. I am saying partial because due to the time constraint we couldn't visit many tourist spots in Mumbai.

We started our trip to shirdi first.To reach from Mumbai to Shirdi, we booked the AC  sleeper bus via  www.redbus.in This is my first experience of visiting Shirdi in bus, in all other times I have always booked a cab. Here, the bus we got was of ShreeNath Travels as Neeta Volvo tickets were not available .It was great in terms of comfort and seating, but everything has the plus and minus, so here also some exists. Actually the redbus people didn't share the contact number of the bus driver, neither they had correct information about the pickup point for us. We had to board the bus from Mira Road Mumbai, and the pickup points mentioned to us over the phone were not accurate. Important to mention, we had to keep calling the customer care of Redbus to get the pickup details, and these people kept on changing the pickup points once we reached their mentioned point. Our bus boarding time was at 9.00 pm but taking worst case scenario we started looking for pickup point at 7.30 pm onwards which proved helpful to us and buyed us time to get this mess sorted off. The customer care was not ready to share the travel agency details even, on my husband's sternness they finally spill the beans. We took the auto, and searched for the venue. At last we reached there, the pick up point 'Thunga Hospital, Mira Bhayandar Road'. And the travel agency there has a small box like shop, he was not even aware of our bookings mentioning that the details of  bookings done online are not shared with them. Gross !!!
Anyways, if you need to board the bus from Mira Bhayandar Road, then do search for correct pickup point. I picked up the visiting card of that traveller before boarding the bus, in case need the details please feel free to use the shared one.
PS: all details are based on the visiting card of the traveller.No claim of accuracy guaranteed.

Shree Nath Travels
Address: Shop No-4, Holy Complex, Opposite Dominos Pizza, Near Raymond's Showroom, Mira Bhayandar Road, Mira Road East, Thane, Maharashtra 401107

Contact Person: Mr. Sohan Singh Kitawat
Contact Number: Tel: 022-28119868
                             Mob No: 9029449772
                                          : 9324550015
Finally we boarded the bus which was already 15 minutes late. Looking the seats and working AC, we felt relieved. All were so tried that didnt realise when we slept, woked up at our destination...the last stop...'SHIRDI'
On reaching shirdi, the weather was pretty cool. You wil find many autowallas who can drop you to the temple, or in case if you want to get refreshed and take bath, the rooms on hourly basis are also available. We took the second option  and booked one room to get ready. It was comfortable and also reasonable (cheap) option. We didn't need to book the hotel room and pay extra bucks for just 1-2 hours. After getting ready, around 6 am we headed towards the temple, the same autowalla- i guess he must be the agent of that hotel, walked us to the temple which was real near by at 10 minutes walkable distance. There the hotel person has their own shop for prasad and offered lockers for the customers to put their belongings, shoes etc safely. From this shop we bought the prasad ( which is really costly, 500 bucks for one set) the other guy from the shop showed us the way to the entrance of the temple, and followed us to the premise without charging anything. I must say the costly prasad was worth it as our belongings, mobile phones, shoes, everything was intact and safe on receiving.

Lucky for us that we started early morning, there was not a single queue on the main entrance, and we had like a cake walk reached the inner premise, and here also it was not a much crowded one, no push and pull, along with a pleasant and cool weather. Kido slept on his father's shoulder, so no tantrums also. Remebering my earlier visits, even in the early mornings we had to face a huge crowd and so much of pushing, but this time it was total different. The next day 'Lunar Eclipse' has to be observed, so again fortunate enough that we visited on right time, else the temple would have been closed due to the eclipse. Finally we had darshan of the Sai baba, and then we spent a good amount of time in the temple premise as we had to board the bus at 12 pm.
Coming out of the temple, we had breakfast, and then started towards our pickup point 'Neeta International Hotel, Shirdi' . The bus we had to board got cancelled, and we had to wait till 1 pm for the substituted bus. Finally, the bus arrived and it was a pleasant journey watching the movie 'PK'.
Kido got some stomach issues, and had loose motions, but she also spared us from the mess as neither did she soil the diaper nor us, only asked to do 'potty' wherever the bus took the breaks. Lucky, lucky and just Lucky :) :)

We reached Mumbai (Drop at the last stop 'Borivali National Park') and reached home at 10 pm, picked up medicines for kido and dinner for us. All so tired, ate in a jiffy and went to sleep, to get ready for next day's Mumbai Darshan. !!

Sometimes instead of wandering in the labyrinths of old memories, its good to create new ones. Feels refreshing and relieveing, and on the top of that people who love and care for you makes them wonderful. Feeling blessed !!