In our first part of the blog we visited Solapur Municipal Building (click here to read part one) and a little walk of 100 metres and we were at Siddeshwar Temple.
Siddeshwar temple is in Solapur District and is very sacred to hindus and the members of Lingayat faith. This temple is surrounded by a lake which is actually full of algae and overgrown grass.
It is a Gram Daivat which means God of the city.The temple wall at first glance could be easily mistaken as the fort wall. The huge board at the entrance ensures that you don’t mistake it so.
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| Fort or Temple !! |
The temple entrance like all the Indian temple is flanked with shops selling prasad, malas and colourful toys.
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| Festival of colours |
In India when you are entering any temple it offers so much colour and gaiety that one gets the feeling of coming to a huge Village fair.
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| Explosion of Colours |
This temple is quite near the Solapur Railway station and Solapur Central Bus stand and can be easily reached by auto or even by walking, if you are ok with walking around 2 kms.
After depositing our shoes at the shoe counter .We started to move towards the temple.The temple wall was running on our right side and the lake on our left side and nestled in the laps of trees we could see glimpses of outer wall of Bhuikot or Solapur Fort.
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| Bhuikot at the far end can be seen from Temple |
Just before the entrance there were two shivlings and opposite to there was this small Ganpati temple where I paid my respect before entering the temple complex
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| Ek Salaam Ganpatiji ke naam |
From here on we entered the main gate
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| First look of the temple from the main entry gate |
As we entered the temple complex we saw hundreds of people with folded hands were chanting Om namo shivay behind the priest perched in the mandap and doing the yagna. The sound of slokas were resounding making the atmosphere all the more spiritual.
The best thing I liked about this temple was the size, which is very large and secondly it is very clean. Though there were so many people chanting and yet not for a moment we felt uncomfortable or hassled, infact we too enjoyed the occasion and the ambiance.
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| People chanting |
Here an interesting thing happened, as these people were chanting I told my friend Nikhil to make the video of the same from my phone as he was handling my mobile and meanwhile I was taking pictures of the temple from my camera.
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| Temple top |
Nikhil said “Aashish people will mind we rather not shoot the video” I said chod de mai video le leta hu” and I started to shoot the video.
(Video Of Chanting shot by me)
Next I moved on to take the pictures of the temple when a local villager tapped me on my shoulder and said something in marathi which I was not able to comprehend but I was worried because Nikhil’s words were now echoing in my mind,Hence I politely explained to him that I’m taking pictures so that I can write.
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| Beautiful Temple top |
He asked me Tumhi Photographer aahe ka ?(Are you a photographer), I nodded and then he said “Mahja ek photo kada na” (Take one picture of mine) I was relieved and amused and said “Kaka me mandirachi photo kadto lokanchi nahi”(I take pictures of temples and not people). He smiled and I moved on to the main temple where we have the idol of Shivyogi shiddharameshwar. We paid our respect and came out of the temple. In case if you want to read more on Siddheshwar click here
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| Shivyogi shiddharameshwar idol |
Talking about this temple with one of the locals I was told that January is the best month to visit as lots of ceremony takes place like Kaathiche Lagan which literally means marriage of sticks.then there is a famous Jatra (Religious Fair) happening around this time known as Gadda Yatra for 15 days and also lots of people come here to perform marriages and other important functions.
We moved out of the temple to go to the Bhuikot or Solapur Fort, our next destination.
Next blog me woh Bhi Dekha doonga 😆😆😆
Thank you for reading the blog. Please do comment and join my blog site. In case if you missed the first part of this blog click here and read.
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