..."A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken."...

... when you are visiting a holy place, u tend to develop spiritual thoughts... at least on your way to the 'temple' ... u start the journey with a whisper of prayer... may be a note of thanks to that Almighty who finally 'arranged' to made this journey a reality... and u thank those who ended up with u in this journey or vice-versa... u thank the driver for coming only one hour late... okay!... u don't do that ... but in our case ... i almost did!... i mean... this was my first journey... i do not know how long it will take to reach there and i was pretty 'charged-up' with excitement ... and i have a confession ... i wasn't particularly in that spiritual mode... yet!...


... for me it was a 'road trip' first... albeit to a famous 'shrine' ... and of course ek mauka to pay my respect and perhaps strike some deal... i mean... i feel i am at that juncture in life when u need some push from 'forces of higher nature' ... so there we were...


... now we had one of the best 'darshans' of Sai Baba... that one can imagine... and the best thing.. we were not 'dragged' by the marshals... :) ... so after the darshan and thousand meter walk on the hot paved way (at least it seemed thousand meters then!) ... we were back in the Taxi... the AC was full and we were heading back ... at some point before our journey began... Ajay told me about the sugarcane juice vendors around the Shirdi... apparently the striking thing about them is that they don't use the modern machines to extract the juice from sugarcane... but a jugad... if u want to use that term... and since it was fairly hot and we had already devoured the sandwitches and the poha and upma we had earlier was lost in our intestines... we decided to stop at one such stall... the juice was fresh... the place was... well... deserted... and i cudn't stop myself to ask Ajay to take a picture... and it was MG's phone that came handy...





... we were not feeling that hungry then... i mean... fresh sugarcane juice with Kurkure to munch... and therefore we decided to have lunch after reaching Nagar... Ahmednagar for the uninitiated... another reason for that decision was that our driver was confused about the whereabouts of good place to eat... and as the fate may have it... we were not able to 'locate' any good hotel to 'satisfy our hunger'... i liked that term! :p

...so it was decided that we will have our petpooja @ poona ... i guess MG was not very convinced with the idea... i can only guess what was going thru Ajay's mind ... and being a Piscean i was in a position to convince myself for any argument...

... and as it happens with me every time my mom asks me to join for the breakfast/lunch/dinner... i felt the hunger pangs somewhere after Nagar and lawng before Poona was in the sight... the kurkure and Juice were lost again... but then somehow we arrived with our growling stomachs... and sweaty shirts...

... after reaching Nashik phata we had to decide if we shld visit a restaurant... or order at home... and after several rounds of discussions we thought let our mood decide after physically reaching home... and since i have experienced this several times before... upon reaching there we were simply too worn out to visit any place again... so ... we called the PizzaHut... and after some anxious hungry moments later... our packets arrived...

... now i am hungry!... i mean... it's time... to munch something...