Yesterday (January 21, 2012) i received mail from Sai Brother
Sachin ji narrating his Padayatra (traveling on foot) experience to Shirdi. After going through the content of the mail, we decided to post this experience by not considering our blog policy as it would be very much informative to devotees all over. It will certainly prove to be a useful guide for those interested to go to Shirdi by walking. Below is his mail with all necessary details.
Sai Brother
Sachin ji from India says: Hello Hetal Ji, Om Sai Ram. This is Sachin Nath from Hyderabad. Please find attached document wherein I have my experience of Mumbai to Shirdi Padayatra along with pictures and links to videos and also do's and don’ts of during Yatra for those devotees, who may want to pursue Padayatra in future.
This experience details of each and every day of the Padayatra. I am sure this will be helpful to many devotees who intend to do such a Yatra or it may motivate few others to go on such Yatra. There is not much information on such Yatras on the net despite lakhs of devotees undertaking such Padayatra every year. This experience also carries pictures and video links and do's and don’ts of the Yatra. I will be grateful if the pictures are posted along with the experience as that will be really interesting for Sai Devotees.
I will have no issues if my email and my contact number (09666682162) are put along with my experience, just in case if any devotee wants to seek more info from me directly. This was my first experience of Mumbai to Shirdi Padayatra 2012 (distance of almost 270 km). I am hoping to see this experience on your website along with pictures soon.
Shirdi Padayatra 2012 (Shraddha Padayatrik Mitra Mandal)
In the year 2010, during one of my visits to Shirdi, I saw a big group of people (Padayatris), who had walked the distance of Nashik to Shirdi, a distance of almost 100 km. After that, I read about Mumbai to Shirdi Padayatra online (it was a very brief article) and I became very interested in participating in one such Padayatra myself. Since I stayed in Hyderabad, getting in touch with Padayatri Mandals and groups in Mumbai was very difficult and more so there was not much contact information about such Padayatras on the internet .
I used some websites like
Fropper,
indiadivine.org and also
www.shirdisaibabaexperiences.org to let people know of my intent to do Padayatra with a hope that someone would contact me to join them for a Padayatra. But nothing came out of it until June/July of 2011. One gentleman named Nivas contacted me and informed me that there is a group leaving for Shirdi in the next couple of days. But that was too short a notice for me to take a break from my work for almost 2 weeks. I had to let go off that opportunity at that time, but Nivas did inform me that there will be another one in December.