Some of you know that I have no job right now so enjoying my stay at this site for last 5 months or so and posting in different categories. Now I have decided to participate in #IndiaUnited regularly. Looking forward to support from the community with a promise to give back as much as possible.
We past through this temple on our way to main town.
A couple of weekends ago I was at my home trying to finish few posts for Hive. My friends were calling, but I didn’t want to meet anyone. I was eager to go for an outing, with Rooney.
I asked Rooney if she would be okay with accompanying me to Vrindavan this weekend. She was with me on my last trips to Haridwar and Rishikesh. I am sure members of this community know all about the places I have mentioned in my post.
So we decided to go on my motorcycle. Brindavan is just 125 km from Delhi, so I reached Rooney’s house at about 6 in the evening and we were on the road within the next 30 minutes.
See, traveling by motorcycle is cost-effective as well as takes much less time, and Rooney doesn’t have to deal with the vomiting problem while traveling by motorcycle. But since bus travel is almost impossible for her and the train travel for such a short distance without a reservation, she will never agree.
We had nothing much to carry for this two days program but could have done with just a pair of extra inner wears and a couple of tees but then we had to keep a set of clothes for entering the temples as we didn’t want to enter temples in jeans and shoes.
On our first night, we stayed in a medium hotel because by the time we reached Vrindavan, most of the ashrams had closed their entries, as most of them allow visitors to come back to their rooms and attend evening prayers before retiring for the day. But the hotel we stayed at was well within our range. So we strolled on the roads and enjoyed walking with devotees, and after having meals, we came back to our room.
We woke up early the next morning, as we wanted to attend more temples Temple, Shri like Bankey Bihari Temple, and all the other temples on this day itself, as we wanted to move to Mathura the next morning. Incidentally, there is no entry fee anywhere, and we don’t have to make any donations if we don’t want to.
If you ever come to Vrindavan, then forget about food costs. You will get free food in government-run food centers, which is a nice initiative by the tourism development board. They say it’s a facility for tourists and devotees in this area to promote tourism after the COVID era. Food of good quality is available for free to tourists and devotees coming from outside. I felt Rooney was a little hesitant, so I took the initiative and took her inside. She liked the food and service and forgot her resistance.
She saw that even the rich people were coming to eat this free food since they didn’t call it free food, but Prasad. If you don’t know what a prasad is, Google it. Incidentally, the management told us that a similar facility was available in the Mathura and Govardhan areas too. They even offered rooms for very low registration fees, which were practically nothing when compared to even medium- or low-budget hotels. And mind you, they provided all the facilities, almost at par with low-budget hotels. That day, we had our lunch and dinner in the same place, which reduced a lot of the burden on my wallet.
The next day, we wanted to go to Mathura, but Rooney thought we could come back later, as she had a few more temples in mind at Vrindavan. So we checked out at 8 in the morning and shifted to an ashram, which had been on my radar for a long time. They don’t have any fixed room rent, but they leave it to you in case someone wants to donate for the maintenance of the Ashram. We donated a small amount, which they accepted gratefully and gave us a receipt for the same.
We left our motorbike at the Ashram after about an hour and hired two bikes from a bike hiring service because Vrindavan is a crowded town with narrow lanes. So that day was a lot of fun. We spent the whole day visiting various temples on our rented bikes, eating at the government food center, and doing some shopping. You heard me right. Rooney wanted to buy a dress from a nearby mall that looked different, but I had seen a similar dress at a local shop and, would you believe it, the difference in price astonished both of us. It was almost 50% cheaper.
All images mine