Wednesday, June 20, 2007

My Travels - Gandhinagar - Part 4 - AksharDham


Every person who comes to Gandhinagar must pay a visit to the Akshardham temple.

I could not visit the Akshardham temple of BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Sanstha on the first evening of my stay. I felt very disappointed that I could not go there considering the fact that it was open till 8 pm in the evening. So I decided that on the second day, I will definitely try to reach there somehow.

I was able to finish my training by 4 pm on the second day. My flight to Mumbai was at 6:50 pm and hence I had some time with me. Hence I decided to take a risk and go to the temple to seek darshan of Lord Shri Swaminarayan. Fortunately, two trainees -(Lord Swaminarayan bless them) decided to help me out by accompanying me to the temple.



So we picked up a rickshaw and decided to go there. The GNG rickshaws are definitely slower than the petrol rickshaws. We reached after some 15 mins. A few years back there had been a terrorist attack at the temple and hence security has been tight over there. Once you are done with the security formalitites, you can go ahead and view the temple complex. For lack of time, my itenary consisted only of visiting the temple.

The place is very beautiful and well maintained. Huge gardens, amusement parks and rides for chidren, nice washroom facilities, food courts all make it a nice place for the entire family to visit. If you plan to cover each part in detail, then I suggest that you reserve you entire day for it.

I headed straight to the temple. The temple structure is quite modern yet has that old world fine art of Indians. In short, it is a very beautiful structure. Inside the temple, Lord Swaminarayan in the colour of gold sits in a relaxed posture giving his blessings to everyone present over there. The temple also has a first floor where you can read about the history of Lord and his successors - the latest being Lord Pramukhswami Maharaj. To read more about the place, go here



After looking at the Lord and getting satisfied (In Hindi... Gandhinagar aana safal ho gaya :-) ) with my trip, I decided to return. There is no direct transport from Akshardham to the Ahmedabad airport. So that was a big worry for me. But fortunately, I reached the airport well before 5:50 pm.

This is the last in the series of my posts related to my stay in Gandhinagar. Please feel free to add comments. Bye for now.







2 comments:

Bhavik said...

wow.. Itna achcha English kaise likh leta hai.. U r in wrong profession. you should go to journalism.

Sumo said...

Hmm...nice description of ur stay, dude!!! It was almost like I was there!!! Keep it up.

BTW, when can I expect a visit to my blog? U seem to have stopped visiting ages ago!!!