VACATION

SOURASHTRA TOUR
1.AHMEDABAD
Recently we have been to Sourashtra tour. The itinary was selected by us according to our choice and the Southern Travels arranged transport and Hotel accommodation at various places.
We planned of visiting few pilgrimage centres such as Nageshwar, and Somnath temples (Two of Twelve Jyothirlingas) and Dwaraka coupled with few heritage places like Porbander, Gondal and natural Safari like Gir Sanctuary..
We started our journey by car from Ahmadabad reaching Ahmadabad from Secunderabad by train.
Ahmadabad is known as Walled city famous for few interesting tourist attractions. On arriving Ahmadabad we straight away went to visit Gandhi Ashram which is in the heart of city. Set up in 1920 on the Western bank of Sabarmati River Gandhi Ashram presents nostalgia of gone by days. The internationally famous Dandi March was started from this place. The place is well preserved and lot of daily things used by the Mahathma is on display. Later on we visited Iscon temple and had Harathi Darshan of Lord.
On the return journey from Junagad we stayed for two days at Ahmadabad again. The other places worth seeing at Ahmadabad are Adalaj Stepwell, Akshardham temple and Vaishnodevi temple.
Adalaj step well situated in outskirts of Ahmadabad .This deep well was built in 1499AD by queen Rudabai wife of Vaghela chief Veer Singh. to provide resting place and source of drinking water for villagers. The pillars and walls show Hindu culture style. The descending steps of the well leads to a series of underground platforms about five stories below to the octagonal well. The well is covered. This step well is with three entrance stairs. All three stairs meet at the first storey. The architecture is Indo Islamic. All the walls are carved by ornamentation, mythological scenes. It is really fabulous to watch the intricacies of construction and wonder the technology used in constructing such wonderful structure.
Akshardham temple is a beautiful temple in a 23 acres plot of Gandhinagar.It is majestic amid sprawling gardens. The temple is built with pink sand stone. The seven foot high gold leafed Murthi of Lord Swaminarayan is the focal point of complex. The Swaminarayan is in sitting posture with the right hand raised in Abhay mudra.Both of his disciples Swami Gunatitanand, and Gopalanand Swami Idols are there on both sides of main idol. There is an exhibition followed by Sound and light show presenting inspiring episodes and incidents on Hinduism. We could not see the show for want of time as it requires minimum half a day to spare. The visitors rush is quite heavy and security checks are very elaborate as not even money purses are allowed inside the premises. The temple is opened for visitors in the month of November 1992.
The other temples visited in Ahmadabad are Vaishnodevi temple and Shirdisai temple and Ambaji temple. We are told Vaishnodevi temple is constructed almost as replica of the temples of Vaishnodevi of Jammu and Hardwar. There is a beautiful bird Sanctuary at Nal Sarovar which is about 60 k.m from Ahmedabad.We started early morning to Sarovar to have an glimpse of migratory birds. We are partially disappointed as there is no proper system to take visitors to the spot for viewing. You will be surrounded by hawkers and they confuse you and cheat you. We avoided taking risk of going with these hawkers in unreliable boats into mid stream. Our next halt after Ahmadabad was Jamnagar.