27th April 2024, Saturday - 9

After enjoying the beautiful surrounding we proceeded towards the last of the Ashta Vinayak temples in our list –the Girijatmaj Temple in Lenyadri. Carved into the rocky cliffs of the Sahyadri mountains, this temple showcases the brilliance of ancient Indian cave architecture. "Girijatmaj" translates to "son of the mountain," signifying Ganesha's association with Parvati, the daughter of the mountain god Himavan.

We had a good exercise climbing the steep staircases cut in the rocks. Locals warned us to be on the lookout for monkeys on the way to the temple. These monkeys would snatch prasad or any other eatables visible through transparent plastic covers. All of us had decided in advance that when visiting the last of the Ashta Vinayak temples on our list we would purchase prasad and offer the same to the Lord and take it home to Mumbai. After hearing the locals’ warning, we decided to have all the prasad placed in an opaque back pack so that nothing would visibly attract the monkeys. 


 

Our ploy worked. We crossed around 50 monkeys. These were in several sizes and were in groups of 5 or 6. But we were able to reach the temple atop the temple without any of these monkeys jumping at us. Aarti was going on when we reached the temple. After the aarti we had a divine darshan and started our descent. But we made sure that the prasad was safe inside the opaque back pack. A family of father, mother probably in their early 30s with their young son were not lucky with respect to their prasad. In spite of hiding the prasad in a cloth, one of the monkeys saw the lady hiding the prasad and in a swift move snatched the plastic bag and carried it away.

It was around 915 AM by now. After the descent we had a well-deserved breakfast at a local hotel. The April summer had picked up intensity and it was getting hot by the minute.

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