This weekend I was gratified by the company of my cousins and family and since we were not too keen in travelling far we arranged a small trip to Shirgaon Sai temple, popularly known as Prati Shirdi (since it is built much akin to Shirdi Sai Baba’s authentic spiritually enlightened place-Shirdi).
We chose to travel by public transport and started figuring out the options of reaching there in cheapest and convenient way. We queried various bus depots like Vallabhnagar ST bus depot, PCMC bus depot regarding direct bus till Shirgaon but we were only being rerouted so we gave up on road travel. We didn’t want to ruffle our brains anymore and as any good IT techie does… we hit on the Google Map  helpful as ever that traced the closest landmark to Shirgaon, Somatane Phata for us which is midway of Dehu Road and Talegaon.
Now there were two ways to reach Somatane Phata- one was via road i.e. take the bus to Talegaon or Kamshet which starts from Chinchwad and the second one was via take the local train. The clock was striking 11am and we wanted to make our trip more exciting so we rushed to Kasarwadi station for the 11:20am local train. Quite unsure whether the train is left, wobbling and gobbling we went to the ticket counter and were glad to hear the ticket distributor say the words,’paanch min mein train ayegi’ …that’s when we knew ki ‘Aaj toh Sai baba ka bulawa aya hai’! Being a holiday, the train was pretty airy and spacious and we bagged window seats bindaas.
While in the train while chit chatting with other passengers, we got to know that alighting at Begdewadi (station after Dehu Road) is a better option rather than going all the way to Talegaon since Somatane phata is hardly 5min by TumTum from there. We were extremely pleased with the information provided by them and thanking them we walked down the railway platform to find a direct TumTum to Shirgaon!We were quite zapped to see how well planned our actually unplanned trip was going! In our hearts we thanked dear Sai.
We reached Shirgaon in about 15min by TumTum whose charges were decent Rs.15/- only. After reaching Shirgaon we beheld the mystic pleasure of Sai in his Moorti, Gabhara, Dwarkamai (place where Saibaba used to stay) and Chawdi(place where Saibaba used to meditate). We enjoyed every bit. The trustees have also built Annachatra(at nominal charge of Rs. 20/-) for devotees which is as good as a nice restaurant with good seating arrangements, lightings and the most happening thing, Prasad was more than awesome…we all kept licking our fingers.
After filling our tummies with tasty food and filling our hearts with Saibaba’s love we headed back home.

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