Ahmedabad - Dwarka


This will be a day wise series of the Gujarat Trip planned in the month of December. 
The days will then be merged for the final blog.

Day 3

Ahmedabad - Dwarka

We started from our accomodation in Ahmedabad around 5:45am towards Dwarka. After driving for around 3.5 hours, we halted for breakfast at the Highway food mall. As it was earlier in the day bigger outlets like McDonalds, Dominos were not operational. However one of the food vendor was serving gujrati breakfast. We ordered fafda, dhokla, bread pakoda, methi pakoda and poha. The tea post outlet served hot and delicious tea, much needed on a cool breezy morning. 
We then headed over to Gopi Talab and on the way covered Rukmini ji ka mandir and Gopi Nath ji ka mandir. This was then followed by Beyt Dwarka. 
Beyt Dwarka is a small island near the mouth of Gujarat which was accessible only via boats until a few years back. As an alternate , a beautiful bridge has been constructed now called the "Sudarshan bridge" which allows all road transport. However all vehicles need to be parked in the designated parking lot. Shared autos run from the parking lot ferrying commuters till the temple. They charge 100₹ per person. They give you an option of 2 more temples, which are not worth spending time. Beyt Dwarka had crazy rush which was not managed. It took us around an hour for the darshan. We then took the autorickshaw back to the parking lot which took us 10-15 mins. It was 6:30pm and we were yet to cover Nageshwar jyotirling. We started for Nageshwar which was a 40mins drive from the Beyt Dwarka parking lot. 
The parking at Nageshwar is filthy and not  constructed. The Temple is open till 9am, we reached by 7:15pm. While asking for entry direction from a local shop owner , he directed us to the backdoor entry which helped in avoiding the queues. We had beautiful darshan and aarti as well. We also clicked a few pictures with the huge Shiva statue in the temple premises. The darshan was done and we had to look for food. While going to the parking area, a restaurant lights were shining bright. With the thought of trying , we drove towards it. The restaurant (Mahi hotel & restaurant) looked nice, it came out that the restaurant opened just the previous day. The staff lacked the training , the available dishes were limited but the food was delicious. The day's itinerary was complete. It was now time to check in to the accommodation. Our accommodation was in the market which was quite crowded owing to the fact that it was dinner time for many. The narrow road and high number of vehicles led to a traffic jam taking 20 mins to cover 50m. We finally checked in and retired for the day.

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