Day 1 – Varad Vinayak – Ballaleshwar – Mahaganapati
Where is it Located?
Ranjangaon – Taluka Shirur, District Pune, Maharashtra, India.
Ranjangaon is a busy industrial town on the Pune Ahmednagar highway. The temple is adjacent to the highway and easily accessible.
How to reach here?
- By Road, from Mumbai Ranjangaon is 184 km, via Bengaluru – Mumbai, Mumbai – Pune highway.
- By road, From Pune, Ranjangaon is 52 km.
- By rail, the nearest railway station is Uruli railway station that lies just 16 Km away from Ranjangaon.
Best time to visit?
Any time throughout the year.
- During the monsoons (June – September) it is humid, temperature around 30 deg
- Hot during summers, temperature going upto 40 deg
- Winters are comparatively milder, temperature around 28 deg.
Timing
5 AM to 10 PM
Entry Fee
Entry FREE, Parking free.
Where to stay?
Similar to the other Ashtavinayak temples, here as well there is a Bhakt Niwas for convenience of pilgrims. Afternoon lunch is provided by the temple as prasad. There are a few hotels as well in the vicinity. As the temple is right on the highway, there are several locations nearby to stay overnight if needed.
Our Experience
We have left Pali around 1.30 pm after our lunch. The route we follow is shown below. It takes us 4 hours to reach Ranjangaon. We follow Google maps all way, as the sign boards are not precise enough.
Once the industrial belt of Ranjangaon MIDC passes by, the Mahaganapti temple is on the right. The entry door is very ornate stone structure and the temple is hard to miss. We locate a good parking spot and park our car on the highway itself. The temple premise is very well maintained. There are quite a few shops around the temples along with guest houses and restaurants.
There is shoe stand to keep foot wear safe and we also get a token to help retrieve our shoe bag. There seems to be very little queue, and we assume that we would be in and out of main sanctum in 30 mins. But we are proved wrong. The queue is long even beyond this waiting area. So it seems that there are different waiting areas. The waiting area which you see below is the first one, then the queue proceeds down towards the steps for waiting area 2 and then finally near the temple there is another waiting area 3.
The views from the waiting areas are so divine that I cannot wait to visit the actual temple and experience the spirituality and imbibe it within me. The temple is a stone temple renovated by several Ganesha believers, almost every decade the temple has undergone major renovations; the Peshwas being one of the major contributors.
The experience of darshan of this form of Lord Ganesha is beautiful. It fills my heart with contentment. I express heartfelt gratitude to the almighty for always showering his blessings on me and my dear ones. With head bowed down and folded hands I pray to God to let life happen as whatever is best for me and as per what I deserve, and not as per what I desire.
With such happiness in my heart, I step out of the temple and buy some artifacts to place in my home temple and register this yatra forever in my memory.
The significance of Ranjangaon Ganpati Temple is that it has been constructed in a way that the Sun’s rays fall on the idol during the southern movement of the sun. Such meticulous planning for a temple makes us feel proud of knowledge of science, astronomy and astrology exhibited by our ancestors.
This is the last darshan of our Day 1. Now we proceed to Manchar, where we are to spend the night. Hiren’s friend resides in this village and owns a small hotel, restaurant and a beautiful wedding venue. We reach Manchar in about 2.5 hours to experience the wonderful hospitality of Neeraj and Dheeraj Samdadiya, who own the Jeevan restaurant, Jeevan Hotel and Jeevan Mangal Karyalay .
The last leg of our journey for the day 1 is below.
Day 1 – Varad Vinayak – Ballaleshwar – Mahaganapati
Day 2 – Vighneshwar – Girijatmaj