Pune to Bhimashankar Jyotirlinga

One of the Most Holi Places In India-Lord Shiva Jyotirling

During my annual tours all around India, I and my wife had visited several Holi places in India devoted to Lord Vishnu, Lord Rama, Lord Krishna and Goddess Durga. There are 12 Jyotirlings known to be established by Adi Shankarayacharya who is given credit for reviving Hinduism in India after the arrival of Jainism and Budhism during 5th and 6th centuries BC. Adi Shankaracharys was born in late 8th century and died in 820AD at a young age of 32. Born in a village in Kerala state, he denounced the world at a very young age and travelled througout India from Kerala to Himalayas advocating the revival of Hinduism and establishing several Lord Shiva shrines at many places. These shrines have become famous as Jyotirlings. Bhimashankar Jyoirling is one of these Jyotirlings and we planned to visit it during our visit to Pune. So, on the next day of our stay we left our hotel early for Bhimashankar. The distance between this place from Pune is just 120km but it took us about 3 hours to reach because of heavy traffic on Pune-Nasik road.after about 60km of drive, the road is single and zigzig because of some hilly area. From the foothills, one has to climb about 200 steps to reach the temple situated on a hillock. there was a huge crowd for general public, so we purchased special darshan tickets @ 500/- per person. Though we saved time in Darshan, It took our driver more than an hour to come out from the parking and main temple road because of vehicles parked on both sides of this narrow road. We had witnessed this problem several times in the past also because of mismanagement of traffic and bad parking in most religious places in India and it needs to be managed well. Another problem in these places is the non availability of clean toilets. Good restaurants were also not availble near the temple. Coming back to the darshan of Jyotirling, it was quite good inside and crowd was well manged. sine photography of main dity in the temple is prohibited but we could still take a couple of photos with Lord Shiva Jyotirling in the background. Our reurn to Pune also took about 3 hours and we had to stop on the way at an ordinary roadside dhaba to take food and tea as we were feeling very hungry.