Day 47 and 48 – Sonagir
Day 47 – Thursday, 12th Dec 2013
Day 48 – Friday, 13th Dec 2013
Flashback – Two days back, as we were heading to Panchmarhi, my father and I discuss the thought of traveling to Sonagir, It’s 6 hours from Vidisha and a key religious destination for us. We hadn’t pre planned this trip so we were checking the best mode of transport to get there. If we hired a car, it would take us over 7 hours to get there. Alternatively, we check train availability, it says WL – 75. [WL – Waiting List]. It means that you don’t have a reserved seat and if it remains like that, you gotta travel in General unreserved coach which we wanted to avoid.
Atul Uncle asserts that WL will be converted into a confirmed seat, no problem! It’s hard to believe that over 75 tickets will get cancelled in two days time but we proceed with the train booking anyways.
It’s Thursday morning, we are at the breakfast table and we have a beaming Atul uncle holding our tickets to Sonagir. He says that our tickets are confirmed and we are traveling in S3 coach – 12,13,14 and 15. I can’t believe it.
It’s 10:30 am and we hop into Atul uncle’s car to visit their farm. Their farm is on the outskirts of the city. As we enter their tree laden farm, Rashmi aunty points us to trees of lemon, guava and amla (gooseberries) and mangoes. Lemons and Guava were so ripe and tasty, we pluck a few and eat them. One of their farmers assists us with plucking gooseberries and guavas and we have more than a full bag to carry home. This reminded us of apple, strawberry pickings back in the US. Fun times!
plucking exercise
our collection
We head back home by 1 pm and have some lunch.
Good news is that Atul Uncle’s mother – nanima also plans to join us for Sonagir so it will be the 5 of us. It’s 3 pm and we get our bags ready for our trip to Sonagir. Mummy and Khyati cook some Theplas for our journey.
It’s 4 pm and we reach Vidisha station and await our train LTT – ASR express (Lokmanya Tilak – Amritsar) to Sonagir. The journey is smooth and we reach Sonagir by 9:45 pm.
train route
We have a car waiting at the station to take us to the Jain Dharamshala. We call it a night around 10:30 pm.
It’s Friday morning, 7:30 am and we visit the Jain temple in our Dharamshala complex. It’s beautiful and has a miniature setup of our Sammed Shikhar Jain tirth.
Sonagir is actually situated on a hill and there are 78 individual temples. Post breakfast around 8 pm, we leave to climb the hill. There are around 400 steps and we have to walk bare footed. We offer our prayers at each temple and we reach Temple no. 57 at the very top of the hill. All the temples are beautiful with their intricate carvings and marble work.
Manstambh
Sonagir Jain temples
We walk down the hill via another route to our Dharamshala. It’s 11 am and we are all having some early lunch. We had a 12 pm train back to Vidisha. The Dharamshala staff were kind enough to arrange a taxi to drop us to the railway station.
It’s 12:30 pm and we have boarded the train. The train is running on time and we hope to reach Vidisha by 6 pm. It’s 4:30 pm and our train reaches Bina station. Many locals without reservations get into our compartment and there is nothing you can do other than sharing your seat with them. These people are daily commuters who work in Bina, Ganj Basoda area and live near Vidisha / Bhopal. We happily share our seat (well – we are used to the 4th seat concept in Mumbai locals – Bhaisaab, zara jaga dena! (Sir, please give us some seat!)
It’s 7 pm and we are having some dinner with the family. We are glad we went ahead with our plans for Sonagir. It was a successful short visit, would love to go back for more days some other time.
Tomorrow, we visit the World Heritage site – Sanchi Stupa! Stay tuned all of you.
Thank you for your comments, keep them coming.
Best wishes,
Paras