Jivdani Temple- Virar

This week probably on Wednesday 17th Dec 08 , i was at VN Road to attend the felicitation meet of Mehul Thanki which was at M.G.Road ,Fort office. Afte attending the meet , i came back to VN and met Trideep Moulik an office colleague. while discussing about normal office news, he touched up my trekking news and was curious to know something of that. I told him my previous experiences , and was able to see the interest shown by Trideep. I invited him to our next expedition to Bheemashankar , which trideep accepted. However the coming Saturday was something which i had not planned . trideep threw the idea of going to Jivdani Temple --at Virar, Mumbai. This place being close to Mumbai could be visited in a single days , infact not even the entire day. Since the temple was on a hill , the idea excited me and i was ready . we decided to meet on Saturday 20th Dec 08 at 6.15 a.m. at Kandivli station.
On Saturday, i got up at 5.00 a.m. , infact was waken up by parul ( wife) . after going through morning chores , i left the home at 6.00 a.m and by 6.12 a.m. was at Goregaon station. Caught the borivali train at 6.30 and arounf 6.37 was at Kandivali. i got down at the station and called dada ( Trideep) on his cell, as planned , he was standing below the indicator on platform no.1. we caught the next borivali train and after reaching the station , dashed to platform no. 5.( not sure) and could find a place in virar train. the train was not so crowded , however at miraroad, there was sizeable crowd. we reached Virar stn. by 7.30 a.m., and proceeded to virar east side. There is an autorickshaw lane near the station and they charge 5 Rs per person and take 4 passenger instead of normal 3 as in Mumbai. we caught the rickshaw and asked him to take us without other passengers for Rs 20. the auto went through the small lanes which is of residential area. We reached the base of the mountain on which the temple was situated. the place where the auto leaves you, we walked for hardly 2 mns and the entrance sort of started. the lanes leading to the start gate is full of shops selling flowers, prasad to offered to Goddess Jivdani, pictues,cd etc. on the left side one can find the toilet both for his and hers. We started the climbing on the stairs , which is divided into 2 lanes , for the devotes to climb and for getting down. there were lot of devotees who were climbing along with us. they ranged from womans, young,old mens and childerns. the steps of the temple was smaller ,and we continued our climb. I was climbing faster than dada, who was slower , however was continous. the steps are covered on the top by talpatri , and one would not feel the heat. the devotees climbing the steps were talking rests in the interim to regain some strength. since i was climbing faster than dada, i used to wait for dada to catch up. this was helping me in regaining some stength in the interim. the steps to the godess is surrounded by small shops on both the sides selling prasads, flowers to be offered to godess and pictures. these shopkeepers were actually stopping and asking for keeping our shoes/chappals into their shops along with buying pooja thalis to be offered. you may stop at one of the shops and do so , however you would have to remember the shops name, since all of them were looking identicle. we kept on climbing the steps, which was not in a straight up fashion. it was infact a kind of zig zag , with turns. in between we stopped at few places to take the photo of the entire Virar which was visible. By 8.10 a.m we reached the top of the mountain and after keeping our shoes and taking the thali , we proceeded inside where we were stopped at one place for security checking. the checking was merely a mocary of the word, since he note even used the machine and we eaisly entered the temple. once entering the temple, there are certain more steps to be covered and we moved in a lane and finally arrived at the main temple. it was a huge place with devotees sitting in front of MATA and we went inside to offered the prasad. it took us just 5-10 ,ms to offer and move out . however i can imagine that during peak times it would easily take aroung 30-40 mns to clear that. after offering prasad, we moved up through further steps and reached one more pint , where there was a small teample of Lord Ganesha . the view from this place was quite good and we were able to see the places on the other side of the mountain. the things visible was a professioanl cricket pitch , a small river, train tracks, another adjoining mountain. moving to the right side was a small temple and here there were few monkeys who were trying to snatch food items from the devotees. there is a big OM written on the front side of the jivdani mountain and which is clearly visible even from Virar stn. after resting for about 20-25 mns, we started our journey down. by the time we were climbing down ,we could see the number of devotees increasing. climing down was much easier and without much pain. infact when we were just reaching the base, we saw one family in which one of the man was climbing the steps on his knees and his wife was putting a swastik mark on each steps, and one more person was putting small candle on each step and the other lady was lighting the candle. we could just not imagine the effort and the dedication people have i India. infact dada tried few steps on his knees and told that it was reslly very difficult and required more effort. after reaching the base, we visited one more temple on the way. we decided to eat somthing since feeling hungry. there are no great hotels to eat, however one can find 2 decent refreshment centres. we decided to try Shree Jivdani prasadlay , which was a udipi sort of hotel and was damn cheap. we ordered 2 sada dosas, 1 full tea and i had 2 butter-milk. the total bill was Rs 32.00. the butter milk was really good quality and the white chutney with the dosa was really appreceable. after finishing of the breakfast we caught the auto and finally reached Virar stn.
thus our journey to Jivdani came to an end on an happy note. in the interi one of the shop-keepers told us that the total steps were around 1460.

Key Take-Aways: Start early morning, do visit certain caves which we couldnt since was closed due to some repair work. for those who could not climb, we saw a ropeway trolley which is used for ferrying.