The story so far:

Delhi – Kanha
Kanha and around
Kanha to Bhopal
Bhopal to Bhojpur and Ujjain

The next morning we did wake up as required… as early as 0400 hrs and were out of the hotel and in the temple on time… We had a small argument with the police there over the temple opening early and no cloakroom available to keep our stuff there…

We entered the temple… waited in a not that small queue, and finally got a seat near the Shivling… The Arti was already on and we watched the entire proceedings on the TVs fitted outside the Garbhagreh… The most typical of the morning arti at Mahakaal Temple is the BhasmArti where ashes from a still burning pyre are brought to be used in the arti…

What caught my attention was a Naga Baba who was standing still throughout the Aarti but suddenly he started moving as if he has the most energy in this world… For the next 20 odd minutes throughout the time when Bhasm Arti was going on, he was the person to look at… AWESOME it was….

We rushed back, picked our bags and rushed to the Railway Station to catch the 0715 Intercity Express back to Bhopal… We were just in time to take the tickets and this time we took the reserved compartment, to see if we could make up for the lack of sleep and manage some during out 4 hour journey back to Bhopal…

The next 4 hours did not see a lot of activity except me not letting Aro sleep when I did not get to sleep well…

The train reached Bhopal on time and we quickly found a hotel near the station only and planned for the rest of the day… We wanted to go to BhimBethka ( to see the rock paintings) and then again to Bhojpur ( We could not get enough of the place the last afternoon)…

So we changed, hired a cab and set off to Bhimbethka… The place was without a doubt magical with all those colorful paintings all around… You can read more about the paintings here. and the pictures you can check out below…

After a while we moved towards Bhojpur again and spent the rest of the day there…

By evening we were back in Bhopal and in the new market area… Did some shopping in Mrignayani and had the best pan in the world at Banarasi Pan Bhandar… I was happy to see that the taste had not changed much in the last few years…

The day that started a li’il too early finally came to an end around 2200 hrs with no plans for our final day in MP… there was a certain amount of satisfaction though in whatever we had in the last 5 days !!! had lived INDIA the way we liked…

and tomorrow was yet another day 🙂