Pune to Bhimashankar Jyotirlinga

if you are a Shiva devote , this is a place you must visit. peaceful, mesmerizing, blessed ! the staff are helpful . there is a back road which can be taken which leads directly to the temple and can avoid taking the steps .

First and foremost, the trip was amazing. The darshan was excellent, and since it was Ganesh Chaturthi, I believe most people were busy with home preparations, resulting in minimal congestion on the roads and at the temple. DO NOT USE GOOGLE MAPS -- and avoid Rajgurunagar cut. I started from Pune around 7 AM. Being new to the city, I relied on Google Maps, which unfortunately led me through several incorrect routes. The journey from Bavdhan to Chakan took an hour as it routed me through internal roads. The major setback occurred when it directed me from Rajguru Nagar to Chas-Kaman Dam, Naiphad, and finally Bhimashankar. This internal road was in poor condition, barely 20-25 feet wide. While the road up to the dam was manageable, the stretch from the dam to Naiphad was essentially a walking track, hardly 10 feet wide and very steep. As an experienced mountain driver from Garhwal, I have encountered many hilly roads, but this was not even a road. I am sharing this to advise everyone to avoid this route. The correct route is: Pune → Chakan → Manchar → Bhimashankar. The video in this review from from Manchar Road so u can guess the size of the road u will be driving. Additionally, having driven extensively on highways across India, I must caution that if you expect this to be a highway drive, you should adjust your expectations. The 120 km journey might take around 4 hours, as 80% of the route consists of single roads and Pune traffic. Only 20-25 km of the route, from Manchar to Chakan, is a highway. For the rest of the journey, you will be navigating like an owl

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.