Pune to Shirdi Sai baba, Holy place in Maharashtra, India

 

Shirdi Sai baba is a famous holy man, prayed on par with God in Western and Southern India.

 

Journey:

 

- Pune - Ahmednagar - Shirdi

 

- I started my Journey from Pune in my car on Saturday moorning at 9am. Within Short time I was on Nagar Road ( that goto Ahmednagar).

 

- Pune City - Wagholi strech of road is in a big shock, road widening and development is happening haphazard way. but there are some new upcoming IT parks.

 

- After Wagholi the road become good and you need to pay Rs.31 per car as a Toll. for the road built by Ashoka Infrastructure. The road is good but pass by few Villages where the traffic become very slow.

 

- Industrial VIllages like Ranjhangoan come on the way where you can see some large factories, including that of LG Electronics. This nice road continues till about 50 Kilometers. when there is a right turn towards ahmednagar. Then there is a road to ahmednagar which is under unplanned widening and you get patches of good and bad streches.

 

- After about 30Km on the left you can find a hill with lot of windmills. at this place itself you can come accross a resturant called Smile Stone, this is one of the best resturants on the way and most other are useless. here you can get good maharashra or south indian food. Here you can also see few Ostrich and Ducks being kept in a nicely designed garden. This is nice place to stop at.

 

- Ahmednagar town has nothing much to see. normally the highway skips the main market. main market area is very congested.

 

- We reached Shirdi after about 5.5 hours of car journey. Shirdi was a better then developed place due to tourism. i thought it would be just a village. but you can find more then 50-60 hotels and resorts. The Sai baba devasthan (holy place) entrance is just on the main road, this is where the traffic automatically becoms very small.. On weekends most hotels will be full. It is very strange that when i searched online i could only found 2-3 hotels for online booking. but there were nearly more then 50-60 of them.