Road trip to Amalner.

Hello my dear Readers! I'm writing about my last weeks's 2 days road trip to  Amalner. Amalner is a small town in Jalgaon District in Maharashtra (India). We went to Amalner to visit a famous temple of Mangal Graha (Planet Mars). There are only 2 such temples in the entire world, one being in Amalner, another one in Kolkata. So it was a really good opportunity to visit one of these temples.

Chain of mountains on throughout the way.

According to Vedic astrology, Mangal (Planet Mars) signifies strength, anger, energy, impulsiveness; and it is considered malefic in nature. Mars is the ruler of blood, marrow and muscles.

As I said, Mangal is considered malefic by nature, it is one of the concept in astrology and is a subject of worry.  If a person who has Mangal Dosh in his/her birth-chart, marries someone who is not a mangali, may cause strife, lack of prosperity and other troubles, including death of the spouse. These are the assertions by the Vedic astrology.

The town of Amalner was not very big, not very clean, but the visit to this temple made our trip memorable. My mind was at peace. The temple atmosphere was very holy, spiritual with the priests chanting shlokas in Sanskrit. There were many devotees who had come to offer prayers, that went on for an hour. They performed rituals so that the Mars God would calm down and prosperity will come their way, and they will get relief from the troubles that they face due to the mangal dosh.

We offered our prayers and red lentils to the Lord Mars. We got a whole coconut as a prasaad (holy offering from the temple), that we  are supposed to eat. We then spent some time in the garden listening to the holy shlokas.

The temple had a beautiful garden, with idols of Lord Krishna and Lord Shiva. I took some pictures to share with you all. However, nobody is allowed to take pictures of the main temple and the idol of Lord Mars. So this is a picture of Lord Mars that I took from a holy scripture called as Mangal Strotra.

The holy scriptures for the pilgrims given by the priest.

An idol of Lord Krishna.

Lord Shiva.

Lord Shiva.

The garden in the temple.

Outside the temple there were various stalls selling things required for prayers, like flowers, garlands, incense, coconuts, red lentils, etc. Other items like framed pictures of various deities, brass idols of gods, holy scriptures, finger-rings, key-chains, pendants with a picture of gods on it, etc. were being sold.

Brass idols of God.

Threads to tie on the wrist.

Key-chains!

This was the best part of the trip!

Now talking about the not-so-good part. Its really difficult to find a decent place for the stay. Hotels don't exist there! There are guest houses that have super-dirty rooms at a high price. It was so dirty that I wouldn't stay there even for free. We were then planning to go to Jalgaon city, 65 km from Amalner. But fortunately a guy told us about a lodging. We got an air-conditioned room at just 800 INR! That is about 12 Euros or 15 USD.

Hell cheap. But again it was not very posh, but way better than those guest houses.

How to reach Amalner?

I stay in Nasik city. Its around 190 km from Dhule. And the temple is 40 km from Dhule. So it was our first time, we didn't know anything about the town. Hence, now that you all know, I would suggest, if you ever plan a trip to Amalner, go to Jalgaon city by train and book a room there. Jalgaon city is 65 km from Amalner. So you can take a cab or a bus to Amalner. That would be more convenient.

Do not miss these!

1. This is a Gurudwara in Dhule. Do pay a visit!

2. This Lassi (A preparation of curd, served chilled) in Amalner. It was simply awesome just 20 INR per glass! Shop name- Saibaba Ice-creams!

During this time of the year, when summer heat is at its peak, Amalner, Jalgoan and Dhule are really hot. The temperature goes beyond 40 degrees Celsius! In fact it was unbearable. There is load-shedding for 5-6 hours a day in Amalner, which adds to the trouble. I would say its better to go there during winters.

National highway was awesome. It was a smooth ride, except for some unnecessary super-bumpy speed breakers. The petrol started leaking. A guy on a bike came speeding from behind and told us to stop. God bless him. I thought we had our petrol-tank damaged in the middle of nowhere. There was a two-wheeler garage nearby and the man came to our rescue. He checked and the leak stopped. A pipe had come out and the tank wasn't damaged! We heaved a sigh of relief....Stupid speed-breaker, you can now imagine how bumpy it could get.

I got some nice pics of the country side. Some pics I took from the moving car itself. We came back home the next day at midnight!

National Highway 3.

So that was around a 40 hours long trip. Well it was a good trip over all. Something I would fondly remember.