Udaipur- City of Lakes -2

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Our first day of Udaipur went very well , so we were looking forward to the next day

Day -2
We had our breakfast in the hotel itself and proceeded towards Haldi Ghati. It is at a distance of 40kms from Udaipur. When you pass through the mountains you can see that throughout the way the mountains are of yellow color, which is the color of Haldi (turmeric), that is why it is named as Haldi Ghati. This Ghati has a history which made it epic, a famous battle took place here between Mewars and Mughals in 1576. The Mughals were victorious in this war, but couldn’t catch hold of Maharana Pratap (Rana of Mewar) who escaped.
   Turmeric Color Soil of Haldi Ghati

While on the way to Haldi Ghati we stopped at Eklingji Temple. This Temple is very old and Eklingji is believed to be ruling deity of Mewar state. It has nice and serene environment. We did not encounter much crowd here, so had a peaceful darshan.
    Eklingji Temple

We ended our day by visiting the Srinathji Temple, Nathdwara. This temple visit was emotionally draining and exhausting- and this happened even when we paid a tout for VIP darshan. God knows what a devotee standing in that queue for so long would have gone through.Some of the problems which I thought has been created to mint money:

1. Timings are highly regulated for darshan visit , 45 minutes. How can devotees possibly have a decent darshan in that time?
2. Pandits or touts or both are plenty in the temple and there is no management to control the open corruption going on. The touts take money outside the temple from visitors scaring them about darshan timings being less, huge crowd , chances of no darshan being high and also with the offer that they will make the couple do darshan together. They take you in from a back door while the ordinary queue is swelling up with devotees. This happens as the security staff, the priests and the touts work hand in hand.
3. The temple itself is a maze and there are no markers or directions and devotees need to follow the crowd or depend on tout who acts as a guide too.

(Its been a year, I am hoping things would have changed for the better but my point was that beware of touts!)

So overall our day didn’t end on very good note but still this was also an experience. If you choose to visit this place, be prepared to pay extra money and don’t have much expectations.

So my day 2 ended with this , please stay with me for my next day visit.

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