Trip diary in short...

24th Jan, 2010:

Day1 is about to over, everything going as usual. Met with relatives in Saugor and Bhopal. We are having 4 seats in one compartment and 1 at other, The other 2 with the 4 are showing us rules dat in the daytime the middle seats shouldn't be opened as they are having lower births and they wanna sit on both. Why people are so rigid while traveling. Train is almost delayed by 2 hours, will be reaching Parasnath station around 4 or so.

25th Jan, 2010:

Reached Parasnath station at 5 AM, directly heading towards Madhuban, the base place for the shikharji Hillock. Got the accommodation. 10 AM and we are starting for the hillock, we decided to climb the hillock and perform half yatra and then stay in the Rest house (Dak Bangla) situated on the top of hillock. we reached the first Temple (Chopra Kund) at 2 PM i.e. 9 KMs covered in almost 4 hrs. Starting the half yatra from Gautam Gandhar Tonk towards Parasnath Tonk at 2:30 PM.  Reached Dak Bangla around 5 PM. No electricity, very rare Mobile network access, Mobile batteries getting discharged and the same with Digicam, its good that we are having 2 Digicams to have the backup :-).

Had dinner and slept around 6:30 PM, its so cold here with very less amenities. temperature is around 2-3 C. We all woke up after sometime thinking that its morning now but the watch showed us time as only 11:30PM :-)

26th Jan, 2010:

Slept again and woke up at 5 in the morning, got ready and started at 7 AM for the full yatra of 10 Kms and going down (another 9 KMs) on the same day. completed full yatra around 2 PM. started to descend down and reached 6:30 PM. It became very dark at around 5:30 PM and people who have been shikharji will be knowing what it means to walk in dark in that area. Fortunately the moon was more than half in its size and the night was very much brightened to show us the path, there were places with big trees where moon-light was unreachable there we had to use the Torch.

So in all we covered around 35-36 Kms in 1 and half day and that too barefooted. But it was divine power that made us to do so.

27th Jan, 2010:

We visited all the temples in the Madhuban in the morning, We are having train for Puri in night around 11 PM. But the train is delayed because of fog and will be starting 7 hrs delayed from New Delhi, It means we will get it in the early morning on 28th. We have only 2 days 28th and 29th for Puri. We reached Parasnath in the evening around 6 PM because no traveling is allowed in this region after 5 PM due to the terror of robbers. After reaching the Parasnath we came to know that the train might be delayed more, we got other option of Purushottam express which is running 15 hrs late and suppose to arrive Parasnath in night around 12. We decided to board the train without reservation and adjust it in the train itself.

28th Jan, 2010:

This train started getting more delayed and reached at morning 6:40 AM, Our initial train was delayed indefinitely and supposed to come late in the evening. So we boarded purushottam Express and talked with TC and fortunately got births in 3 AC. The whole day was spent in traveling and we reached Puri in the night around 10 PM. so one day of our Puri stay got lost. Got settled in bhaiya's IOC Guest house. With the help of one of my colleague we booked cab for next whole day for Bhubaneshwar, Konark and Puri visit.

29th Jan, 2010:

We started at around 8 AM for the whole day trip. Went to Dhauli Spiti (Peace Pagoda), the place where King Asoka got the idea of leaving the battle and follow Buddhism. After that we went to Lingraj Temple, famous temple for HariHar Milan. Its very old temple and very serene too. Then we visited Udaygiri and Khandagiri, This place is having Jain influence too, visited all the caves. The caves are having sculptures of Kalinga Yuddh and also the place for meditation used by Jain Monks in earlier days. After this we visited Sun temple of Konark. Then we headed back to Puri, reached around 5 PM and then went to sea Beach for the sunset. Being the Eastern part of India the view of Sunset was not that great, but what we saw that one side the Sun was setting down and the other side Moon was coming to its full Glory, later on we came to know that it was one of those days when the satellite was the nearest to Earth. Came back around 7 PM from there and headed for Jagannath Puri, This time there was not much crowd and we had Darshan only in 15 minutes.

Came back to Guest house and saw all the pics in TV.

30th Jan, 2010:

Started at around 6 AM for the BBSR airport, Bhaiya-Bhabhi had flight at 9:50 AM and we had flight for Mumbai at 12:50 PM. Reached Mumbai at 3 PM.

And this was the end of my spiritual trip, People who are following me will be knowing how much it meant to me...

PS: all these were in my mobile but bcoz of rare access and tiredness I wasn't able to update