Mahakaleswar - Ujjain

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After arriving in Ujjain, I took an auto (40Rs) to Yatri Nivas, a unit of MP tourism near Nanakhede bus stand. I checked in and quickly realized that the AC hasn’t been working. The sweltering summer heat and lack of air circulation made it feel as if I was gonna be cooked in an oven. The receptionist said that a room would be available at 12:00pm. I was so tired from the journey that I wasn’t in a mood to go to the temple in a rush. I decided to take it easy for few hours. After breakfast, I got ready and headed to Mahakaleswar temple in an auto (50Rs). Since it was Monday, there were quite a few pilgrims and almost all of them are from north India. This temple is quite big compared to the other 2 jyothirlingams. As a matter of fact, it somewhat resembled Tirupati in terms of pilgrim queue within various barricades. I brought some flowers and got into the queue. It took an hour or so before I could enter the main temple. The temple has a small water tank in the middle. The architecture is nice but not as impressive as the temples in tamilnadu. Once again the sivalingam was small and nothing special. After worshipping the lord, I came out and visited other deities as well. Interestingly, in this temple the Navagraha’s are all in the form of lingam. I have not seem that anywhere else. You would come across various other sivalingams with different names to the Lord. It was midday and my feet were almost in blisters due to the heat. Every once in a while, I would run into shade to make sure, I was able to walk. By the time, I got out of the temple, I realized that the queue had made up to the road with several hundreds waiting. At 12:30pm, I returned back to the hotel to crash after a good lunch (chapatti & channa masala - it was good!). By the time, I woke up it was 7:00pm and have slept for 5 hours. For the rest of the evening, I whiled way my time on the internet and planned to go to Omkareshwar early next day.

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