Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
Trains, buses, planes and cars – we have traveled by all of them often enough for Samhith to be comfortable with all these modes of transport. Water transport so far had been restricted to short boat rides in rivers and lakes, and we have been yearning to travel by a boat or ship for a long time. The best option for sea travel is of course a cruise, but unfortunately, that is one mode of travel that is currently out of my budget, and I had better not think about that. Our choice therefore was narrowed down to one – a catamaran ride to Alibag from the Gateway of India. We had been planning this trip for more than a year, and finally, the dream came true last weekend, which was long one on account of the Gudi Padwa or Ugadi holiday on Friday. From Alibag All Set for the ride..... Alibag is a 45 minute ride by catamaran from the Gateway, and there are 3 operators to choose from – PNP, Maldar and Ajanta. PNP is the most expensive, offering the AC lower deck and the Non-AC Upper Deck