A day at Mahakal Nagri Ujjain

Here I continue my trip to Ujjain after experiencing a wonderful train journey from Indore to Ujjain. Whenever we visit places like Indore , Ujjain our food-itinerary is always pre planned. It started with Sanchi Flavoured Milk and Shrikhand at railway station. Shrikhand is one dish which we miss a lot at Chennai. Outside Ujjain station we can find many Autorickshaws, few Cycle rickshaws and one or two Tonga (Horse Tanga). Tanga was always used to be our first choice but priorities have changed now. I would like to recommend to all who visits Ujjain to take up Tanga (If you do not feel embarrassed). It has two advantages, first you are helping Tanga wallah for his livelihood and secondly our next generation can enjoy the Tanga ride which will any how vanish in the coming years.

We decided to take Tempo (Big size auto used as shared auto. Old days blue colored tempo used to run with typical engine sound and an excellent speed (Just joking). Many of these Tempos are now replaced by Tata Magic but for me, the charm and experience of blue Tempo is altogether different.So we waited for Blue Tempos and finally after 5-7 min we saw one coming our way. This is one service which I like a lot at Ujjain. Take a Tempo Ride from railway station to Kothi (SDM office) or any other destination to get raw feel of the city. And it’s not expensive also; just Rs 10/- from station to Kothi or you can go up to Freeganj Tower in Rs 5/-. And people here are so simple and sweet that you will never feel cheated.

Tempo at Ujjain (Courtesy Hungama-india.blogspot.com)

We took a tempo from Railway station towards Kothi as we had some work at SDM office Ujjain. Kothi is an old residential palace building of Scindia dynasty and currently it is a district court and Ujjain district administration headquarters. It is a beautiful palatial structure from outside.

Kothi Palace (Courteosy www. panoramio.com)

We came to know that we would have to wait for 2-3 hours for work to get completed. We thought of utilizing this time and decided to take Mahankaleshwar darshan. At 1230 hrs we had taken Tempo from Kothi and reached Mahakal at 1300 hrs. I don’t know whether it was my destiny or it was a Shraadh period that we got very less crowd at the temple and could go directly inside the temple (Garbh Griha). We got this opportunity to do Mahakal puja, we actually touched the shivlinga , did puja and were back outside temple in just 20 minutes. I was very happy and fortunate to have such a wonderful darshan. We purchased Mahakal Prasad sold at Prasad Counter ( Besan Laddu at Rs 110/- ). The Prasad itself was tasty and we regretted that we did not buy one more box of laddu.

When we finished darshan we moved further and went to the Mahakal road and thought of taking Lunch. On Mahakal Road we saw a Bhang shop which we had seen in the program “ Highway on my Plate” of NDTV Good times. We couldn’t resist ourselves and thought of tasting Bhang. We were excited as well as apprehensive. We had never tasted it earlier and werenot sure how it will affect us as we had our work pending and had to return to Indore also in the evening. We reached the shop, inquired about Bhang and ordered plain Thandaai. So bad, we got scared and didn’t taste it. But being a more curious person for anything I was literally staring at the person who was making Bhang.

Bhang is available is two form; one is like a laddu (or Peda) costing Rs 25/- (Rate was displayed on board) and other is in a liquid form in which they make bhang using this bhang peda and strain it in a very fine cloth by pouring ingredients like Milk, sugar , Cardamom, Chikoo, drops of some kind of orange syrup and it will cost you Rs 30/-. After tasting plain thandaai we moved further and were looking for Bhojnalaya to have lunch. There were again many Bhojnalaya offering Maharashtrian, Gujrati and North Indian thali. We entered in the Maharashtrian Bhojnalaya which was looking better as compared to others and was serving hot food and was clean and hygienic. In all these Bhojnalaya they offered Lunch thali ranging from Rs Rs 35/- to Rs 55/-.A thali generally gives unlimited Phulka, rice , dal, 2 vegetable , Kadi, pickle and onion. It was reasonably good and hygienic.

Having finished Lunch, we took tempo from Mahakal to Kothi and reached Kothi at 1400 Hrs. Our work got over at 1800 hrs and we were ready to go back to Indore. While returning from Kothi we got down at Freeganj Tower just to roam around. First we went to Chote Gopal mandir which was just in the vicinity of Freeganj Tower. The Freeganj which was a busy town circle in the afternoon had transformed into a superb eatery zone ; from Paani puri , Chaat, Chhole tikki and Vada pav to Hot dog , Chinese and South Indian to Juice corner, fruit zone to Icecream corner. We took Pani puri and hot dog and and yet another ‘First’- “Rabdi wali Chuski Barf ka gola”. It’s a ice gola coated with tasty Rabdi…Too good. If you happen to be in Ujjain and done with Mahakal darshan and Ujjain Darshan and still have an evening to spend then please go to Tower Freeganj and spend your evening there. I am sure you will enjoy….

This finishes my trip at Mahakal and we caught Indore bus from Dewas gate bus stand near Railway stand.
Important points to note if you are visiting Ujjain :

1. Ujjain Darshan Bus runs from Dewas gate Bus stand at Ujjain and covers most of the points at Ujjain. It charges Rs 37/- each and has two trips one in morning and other in afternoon.
2. There are buses available which covers two jyotirlinga in a day , Mahakaleshwar and Omkareshwar.