All things Bharat

Following the Solapur trip, we took the Hutatma Express in the morning from Solapur station to head to Pune. On the way, (on the train that is), we had breakfast of idli, vada with chutney - a plate of 4 idlis and 1 vada cost INR 50.  Day 1 By about 11AM we had reached Pune and the hotel I had booked a room in was just a walking distance from the station (Hotel Shivam). We reached the hotel, freshened up and by about 1PM had our lunch at an Udipi restaurant - I think it was called Shree Krishna Palace.  South Indian Thali cost about 110 per person. Pretty cheap! The thali had rice, dal, matki, sambar, baingan sabji, 3 puris, dahi, pickle as you can see below. The only thing that irritated us was the weather - it is super duper hot plus the fact that most offices/tourist spots are closed from 1PM to 3/4PM every day! So we had to kill time from about 1.30PM till about 4, hence we decided to do some shopping at Hong Kong Lane near Deccan Gymkhana.  We took the bus (try asking the bus cond

Everything went as per plan with the blessings of the deities. A few pointers if you are interested. Our base was Bombay, we took the Siddheshwar Express from Bombay to Solapur. The train was about 30-45 minutes late. I had booked a travel agent who connected me to a local driver at Solapur. He picked us up and dropped us at the hotel (Hotel Orient Elite near Mallikarjun Temple) at South Kasba, Budhwar Peth in Solapur. We stayed there for 2 days and 2 nights, the travel agent booking covered my breakfast, lunch, and dinner, hotel and taxi+driver charges. It cost about 15k in all for all this. Train bookings were done by me.  Food at the restaurant at Orient Elite is good, somewhat cost effective. Don't forget to consume dahi and milk in Solapur - simply priceless.  We had our breakfast at Kamath restaurant further down in the city. Now the temple visit part.  1. Keeping Solapur as base, we covered Pandharpur, Tuljapur, Akkalkot and Ganagapur. 2. Solapur used to have a poor reputati