A Road Trip wid Family – Season 3

This blog post is about our 10D/9N roadtrip including us, my parents, in-laws and my brother’s family. We chose Saurastra region for this trip and covered Dwarkadheesh Temple, Somnath and Nageshwar Jyotirlingas, Diu and Gir forests.

This has started to become our yearly ritual where all of us do temple run and explore places nearby. Readers interested can go over our Season 2 and Season 1 as well.

We took a flight to Rajkot Airport which is well connected to most of cities in India. Other option is Jamnagar but there are not many flights for connectivity. Rajkot has many good options for hiring taxis and drive to these temples follows a very scenic route as well. Our first stop was Dwarka which we reached from Rajkot via Jamnagar.

Day 1 – Day 3 : Dwarka

Dwarka is home to Dwarkadheesh Temple, dedicated to Lord Krishna, which is one of the four sacred Chardham sites. It also boasts of Nageshwar Temple, which is one of the twelve Jyotirlingas, dedicated to Lord Shiva. We stayed in Lords Eco Inn, a hotel situated on the banks of the sea and withing walkable distance to the main temple.

While we felt temple could have been better managed to have darshan with ease, we were able to get darshans and had a hearty breakfast of Poha, Jalebis, Dhokla and Fafda nearby.

Dwarka has lots of mythological references to Sudama, Lord Krishna’s childhood friend, and there is an island nearby, Beyt Dwarka, which was the residence of Lord Krishna during his ruling years at Dwarka and this was the place where Sudama met (Beyt in Hindi) Lord Krishna.

We spent next 2 days in seeing nearby places and temples, Sudama Setu, Gopi Talab, Rukmini Devi Temple, Beyt Dwarka and Nageshwar Jyotirlinga. I would like to mention one hidden gem, Bhadkeshwar Mahadev temple, which is located on an extruding structure and from where one can witness Sun setting in amid sea waves.

Beyt Dwarka can be reached by a boat ride and there are several temples of interest there, most notably, old Dwarkadheesh Temple and Makardhwaj Temple, dedicated to Lord Hanuman’s son.

Day 4 : Porbandar

We left Dwarka little early and get our breakfast packed as we wanted to see few places in Porbandar before we halt at Somnath Temple.

Porbandar, as it is well known for, is birth place of Mahatma Gandhi. The place has been transformed as a smarak, known as Kirti Mandir.

Besides this, one can go to Harsiddhi Mata Mandir enroute and visit Sudama temple in main city. We had a sumptuous lunch in a Kathiawadi restaurant and we headed to Madhapur beach, which is situated almost midway between Porbandar and Somnath.

Madhapur beach, another hidden gem, has very clean shores and frothy Arabian Sea water. The only distraction to this otherwise peaceful place were vendors offering ATV rides, and creating pollution of multiple kinds.

After taking a brief halt at Madhapur beach, we reached Somnath just in time for the evening Light and Sound show, which is projected on temple walls itself.

Day 5 : Somnath

Somnath temple is said to be first of twelve jyotirlingas which emerged. Not only the temple is highly revered, it also has an equally unique history. It was attacked 17 times by foreign invaders to plunder the wealth accumulation. The temple as it stands today was rebuilt on orders of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, just after India gained independence.

Somnath temple compound is very huge and that is one of the reason why darshan here happens with relative ease. The compound also boasts of a Baan Stambh, which points in a direction where there is no land mass till South Pole!

Out of several choices to stay in Somnath, I highly recommend Sagar Darshan dharamshaala, which commemorates Kokilaben Ambani. Its location is near perfect where it shares compound walls with temple, vast expanse of Arabian Sea in front, huge verandah like balconies to sip tea, sit outs to just watch sea in front, a mess serving good vegetarian food and above all, temple clearly visible on the left side!

We also visited Triveni Sangam, Gita mandir (entire Bhagwat Gita recited on temple pillars), Baan Ganga (Shivlingas amidst sea visible on low tide) and Bhalka tirth (place where Lord Krishna was shot in heels). After that we headed straight for Diu.

Day 6 – Day 7 : Diu, Tulsi Shyam Temple

En route, we visited another hidden gem, Gangeshwar Mahadev temple which can only be visited during low tides. At other times, its unique structure and opening allows sea water to fill entire temple premise making it inaccessible!

Before heading to our hotel, we found a beautiful sunset spot near Nagoa beach in Diu to watch the Sun setting in Arabian Sea!

Diu town, which was ruled by Portuguese till 1960s, is connected by a narrow bridge to Gujarat state and as it is outside its jurisdiction, it is not a dry state! We stayed in Ferns Tent resort, a sea facing property located in a picturesque setup.

We started our next day by visiting INS Khukri memorial, a place commemorating INS Khukri warship which was torpedoed and sunk near Diu coast during Indo-Pak 1971 war. In the evening, we visited Diu fort where multiple movies have been shot, most notably Qayamat starring Ajay Devgan.

As we started prepping up for our last leg of tour, which was Gir, we left Diu early and visited another hidden gem en-route to Gir forests, which is Tulsi Shyam Mandir. This temple boasts of a therapeutic hot water springs.

As we reached and settled down in Fern Gir Resort in Sasan Gir for next few days, we decided to call it a day early as we had to wake up for safari before Sun rises!

Day 8 – Day 10 : Gir, Girnar and Jalaram Bapa

Over the course of next two days, we had obtained multiple Safari permits, both in Sasan Gir and Devalia National Park, which is a smaller enclosure nearby with higher density of Lions, making it more probable to spot them.

To our luck, we spotted multiple Lions within the first hour of our first safari itself and hence we decided to visit only Devalia in the evening and let go of rest of the permits.

As we had an extra day left with us, we made best use of it by visiting nearby Girnar hills, which has a ropeway to take you to Ambaji temple. Otherwise, one can climb some 10K steps and visit numerous temples along the way.

While getting back to our stay in Gir, we visited Junagarh along the way and few sites to just click pictures.

Little did we know that Gir, not only famous for its majestic Lions, is also famous for Kesar Mango, Cow Ghee and Pickles. We saw numerous shops selling these items and not only did we buy some then and there, we ended up ordering more of it even after we returned to Bangalore!

While getting back to Rajkot airport from Gir, we briefly stopped at the shrine of Jalaram Bapa in Virpur, a highly revered saint in Gujarati community.