The next day, the 12th was a Thursday. We went for the morning darsan. The wait was long, about 2 hours because of some special abhishekam going on. Nirmala wasn't too pleased with the wait. But for us, it was much less than the Tirumala wait.
We spent extra day in Shirdi to have more darsans and relax after the first hectic week of travel. Nirmala stayed back in the hotel on Friday. Rao and I went for the darsan again. The security was pushing and shoving and were very rude. That happened on Thurday also and that was what turned Nirmala off. She was happy with the attached restaurant to the hotel and the meals that were served there.
We visited Baba's samadhi and the book store etc. Rao made a separate trip to visit the Wada and the Temple store to buy some diaries and have them mailed to his brother in Hyderabad.
On Friday, the 13th, We went to the bus station, could not get accurate information about the buses to Valsad for the next day. We already made train reservation from Valsad to Dwaraka in Gujarat. So, we did not want to miss that. Well, after a few hours, we met with the future driver of the bus who was able to get us reservations on his bus.
The one person at the front desk of the hotel spoke both Telugu and Tamil. He and the others gave Rao a lot of information about the afternoon trip that we were thinking to visit that afternoon. I called Sanjay, the owner of our Taxi and thanked him for arranging such a great driver and to tell him that Shakeel was paid in full and he was on his way back to Poona.
The afternoon trip on Friday included Sakuri and Panchavinayaka.
Sakuri is a small village and the Temple was about 5km. from our hotel. The road was rough. We travelled by an Auto (cheapest) and hence the road felt rougher!!
Ekamukha Ganapathi (but I read somewhere that it is called Ekamukhi because the Dattatreya idol has only one face instead of the usual three faces) was the main deity here. This was supposedly swayambhoo in a tree. But Kanyakumari was there too. Hanuman had a place and I was happily surprised to see Sri Sathya Sai baba's picture there.
Now the panchamukha (five faced) was in the opposite direction from our hotel and we passed our hotel in the Auto rickshaw. We were again fortunate to see the wheat fields, the rural life and the magnificient sunset. This, the priest said was the only Vinayaka with Vishnu and Lakshmi included in the idol. The priest spoke Telugu and said that he was from Proddutoor of Cuddapah district and performed a very elaborate pooja for us and gave some akshathas(sacred rice coated with turmeric) to be used for any auspecious occasion in the family in the future. We paid 51 rupees per Gothram.
Now, those who know about vinayaka, also know that his vahanam (vehicle) is the mouse. We were each asked to whisper our wish into the ear of the mouse there and never tell anyone what the wish was about!! I haven't told any and my wish is still pending!! But I do have hopes!!!
We returned to the hotel happy. Nirmala and I ate at the attached restaurant and Rao went to check out the Andhra Guntur hotel.
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