Trip to Mount Abu

Mahavir jayanti was coming up and every year we used to go to Dilwara Temple, especially Shri Mahavir Swami Temple in mount Abu to perform our rituals. Being a jain I also used to visit along with my parents when I was young but later because of my schooling and then higher studies I never got a chance again to visit the temple. And it was April this year when I came home after a long time to spend my holidays with them and Mahavir jayanti was on its way. This year also as usual it was planned but since I was at home so it was decided that we will spend couple of days there and will celebrate our festival along. Mahavir jayanti was on Apr 19, Saturday so my father decided that we will go on Thursday evening and will come back on Monday morning. For a background, I belong to jain community and born in a middle class family. From the last 34 years we are residing in jodhpur and my father is having a distributorship of couple of medicine companies. Day came, time came as scheduled we left the house at around 11:30 pm, since mount Abu was just 5-6 hrs journey from our place so we always prefers to go by our own car rather then going in a train or bus, but it depends from a person to person. It was 5:45 am in the morning when we reached mount Abu and in another 10 mins drive we reached our guest house. My dad had already done the booking in Hotel Shikar, it’s a RDTC’s hotel. We all went into our rooms and gathered in the lobby at around 8:30 am. After having our special jain breakfast we took off from the hotel and headed towards dilwara temple. Dilwara Temple is one of famous jain temple around the world and every year thousands of pilgrims comes here and do there poojas during Mahavir jayanti. We reached dilwara temple and it was all crowded to the limits, and that’s the reason it took us almost 4-5 hrs to visit all the 5 temples. Basically dilwara temple is in 5 parts, in other words there are 5 temples which comprises and named as dilwara temple. The five temples are Shri Mahavir Swami Temple, Shri Vimal Vasaahi Temple, Khartar Vasaahi Temple, Shri Pethalhar Temple, and Shri NemiNaathJi Temple. The architecture work can not be expressed in the words, I believe many studies have been done on the architecture and one can find the findings on the websites also. Once we all got free my father decided to take us to a good restaurant named vena, it’s a small restaurant but it prepares good jainy food and specially during jain festivals if offers a good discount as well for jainy as the owner itself is a jainy and this way he contributes something towards his community. Since we all were quite tired and whole night we traveled also so we decided to go back to hotel and take some rest. Around 5:30 pm after having evening tea, we decided to go to nakki lake, when I was young and used to come with my brother and sister, we used to enjoy a lot especially at nakki lake. The beauty of the lake is it is an artificial lake which is in situated in the middle of the town and it is said that in ancient time this lake is dug by gods with there nails and the lake’s name is derived from that. We went to nakki lake and seeing the lake after such a long time is awesome, it was surrounded by full of greenery, it was like our young time has come back and we all enjoyed to the limits, enjoying boating after a long time was good. After enjoying we went to Ashok Vatiakaa which was near the lake only, it was a beautiful and I must say that it is still very well maintained.

We were there for quite some time when my mom as usual desired to do some shopping, near the lake itself there are many shopping hubs and food joints. We did some shopping, had our dinner there itself and we were back to hotel. We all slept early as we all have to wake up early for the rituals. We all waked up early and then we all went to Dilwara temple, there were hundreds of pilgrims like us and we all did our pooja, we were free by 11 am and then after having our breakfast we thought of visiting the old places were we used to go in our childhood. We all went to Guru shikar, this was the highest point of aravali hill around on a distance of about 15-20 km from the city. Reaching there we enjoyed the moment, took some photos for remembrance, and headed towards a temple of rishi atri. After coming down where we parked our cars there were beautiful small hut type stalls and the best part was they offered jainy food also, we had our lunch there and decided for our next point and that was a place named achalgarh, 8-10 km from the city. It is destroyed fort and most of the tourists visit to see this place also this place is having lot of destroyed temples as well. Being there it is like visiting to the ancient time and once been there one can feel the life style of maharajas and same we experienced as well.

Around 4:15 we all turned back for the city and as we don’t want to miss the sunset which we all missed yesterday and we all reached there in time. In mount Abu there is place of sunset where one can really enjoy the

Sunset and it is one of most attractive place in mount Abu, reaching there we enjoyed our snacks and watched the sun going inside the 2 beautiful peaks.

Watching that I thought that once married I will definitely bring my wife here to see the beauty of the nature and after watching the beautiful sunset, it was not sol late so we went for window shopping near the nakki lake and had our dinner there itself, and finally went back to hotel. Morning some urgent call came in and my dad decided to leave, left with no choice we checked out from the hotel and started back for jodhpur, so all together whatever we saw it was good and I will remember throughout my life.