PM Modi on the country’s 73rd Independence Day batted for the development of domestic tourism infrastructure and urged every Indian citizen to visit at least 15 Indian destinations by 2022. The proposal is expected to put some air into domestic travel, which has taken a back seat as many Indians decided to restrain on travel spending. It could also create jobs that the country seems to be lacking late.

But it still remains to be seen how the country’s far from ‘pucca’ transport and tourism infrastructure can cope even if a meager percentage of its 1.25 billion people take the ‘Modi’ challenge seriously!

If everyone does manage to walk ‘Modi’s talk, there in effect would be 18.75 billion trips, or 6.25 billion a year. A report by Google and consultancy firm Bain has it that 1.8 billion trips were made by Indians in 2018. According to the same report, the local trips made by Indians have surged at a CAGR of about 8% in the last 4 years alone.

However, many travel agents feel that the issue is not just confined to that of infrastructure at airports and trains stations. The crux of the problem actually lies in poor connectivity or remote tourist places.

In spite of the many efforts undertaken by the Government in improving road and rail connectivity linking towns and villages, as well as expanding the existing airports and building newer ones, it is still a long road ahead. The increasing travel costs to access remote local areas with insufficient infrastructure can make even travelling to foreign destinations sound cheaper.

Modi though did not assure people that making trips would be easy and wanted them to tour to these destinations even if they lack good hotels, accommodations and other basic facilities. One spinoff for sure would be job opportunities for the local youth and improvement of the local economy.

The town of ‘Shirdi’ continues to attract millions of Sai Baba followers from all across the world that flock in large numbers day in and out. There are facts which surprise even those most familiar with the place. Here are some more facts added to the list from the previous post of the blog:

• When actors turn demi-gods!
  Sudhir Dalvi, a less popular actor, donned the role of Sai Baba in the 1977 movie “Shirdi Ke Sai Baba”. The movie was a huge success in that Dalvi fast became a household name. Interestingly, whenever he was spotted in the streets, Sai Baba devotees would immediately fall at his feet to seek his blessings. Ironically, if industry gossip is to be believed, filmmakers denied him of further opportunities in the cinema world as they didn’t like the idea of an almost god-like figure playing any other roles on the silver screen.
• Jackie Shroff abandoned smoking and drinking while shooting for a film on the great Saint in Shirdi.
  Popular actor of the 1980’s, Jackie Shroff, also played the role of Saibaba in a film made in 2010 – “Malik Ek”. He is reportedly known to have said that he totally abandoned smoking and drinking while the film’s shooting was on. Though the movie didn’t go as Jackie and the film crew expected, it even failed to revive the hopes of an already struggling actor looking to make a decent comeback.
• The Malaysian government wants to invest in Shirdi’s airport.
  In 2016, the Malaysian Government, surprisingly, expressed interest in manning the Shirdi’s airport, in a joint operation with the Government of Maharashtra, for a cost of Rs 1500 crore.
• One can travel all the way from Puri in Odisha to Shirdi
  Shirdi’s railway station, Sainagar Shirdi, is well inter-connected by several trains operating from major cities and towns around India. The railway station, which has been around since March 2009, is a key terminus on the Central Railway line with trains linking to places as distant as Puri and Kokata. The Sainagar Shirdi – Puri Express leaves from Sainagar Shirdi every Sunday, covering a total distance of 1619km with a travel time of about 29 hours, to reach Puri. The Sainagar Shirdi – Kolkata Howrah Junction Superfast Express that starts from Sainagar Shirdi covers a distance of 1790 km with a travel time of about 26 hours to reach Kolkata’s Howrah Junction.
• Shirdi’s literacy rate is higher than the national average.
  The 2011 census reported the average literacy rate of Shirdi town as 70 percent with male and female literacy at 76 percent and 62 percent respectively, as opposed to the national average literacy rate of 59.5 percent.

There is more to it than meets your eye when it comes to visiting Shirdhi. If you are one among the crores of devotees who believe in the miracles of Shirdi Sai Baba, visiting the shrine can make you feel one with the divine spirit and light.

Shirdi is one of Maharashtra’s key pilgrimage towns. Sai Baba, a 19^th century Sufi mystic and saint, who arrived at Shirdi, united people of all faiths and religions with his powerful spiritual teachings and acts. Sai Baba is the presiding deity of the shrine around which the entire town’s economy thrives. Today, the small town of Shirdi, with an official population of about 36,000 people, employs thousands of migrant labourers from all across the state of Maharashtra, and acts as a solace to millions of devotees who stand in long queues for endless hours just to seek the divine blessings of one of India’s greatest spiritual masters.

You needn’t be a Saibaba bhakt or even a believer of sort, but you cannot brush aside the contribution of the mystic saint toward the livelihood and economy of Shirdi as a town.  Here are eight mindboggling facts about Shirdi you never know:

• A whopping 60,000 visitors every day!
  As many as 1,00,000 people visit Shirdi over the weekend, with a reported attendance figure of 60,000 visitors every day. The numbers are expected to go as high as 5,00,000 during auspicious days like Ramnavami, Dussehra and Gurupoornima.
• The temple was once privately owned!
  The magnificent temple that forms the basis of Shirdi’s economy was raised in 1922, some four years after the demise of Sai Baba. Shrimant Gopalroa, a Nagpur-based millionaire, commissioned the temple; it enjoyed private status until a certain point of time. Today the temple is owned and managed by the Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust.
• A stunning donation of 110 crore astounds everybody!
  The temple is never short of rich devotees. One KV Ramani, the co-founder of NASSCOM and a well-known philanthropist, has been donating 80 percent of his earnings to the Trust. He donated 110 crores to the trust for constructing an ashram that can easily put up 14,000 devotees! Well, the numbers just keep growing!

We will follow this post up with some more astonishing facts on Shridhi — facts that are stranger than fiction— in the concluding part of the blog.

Sri Padmanabha Swamy Temple, another famous temple, at Thiruvananthapuram in the God’s own country, is one among the few richest temples in the country. Another popular wealthy Hindu temple is the Tirumala Temple at Tirupati in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The Padmanabha Swamy Temple draws millions of Hindu devotees, travellers and tourists from all across the country and abroad.

The temple has been in news recently for the wrong reasons, largely due to the riches and wealth preserved within the temple chambers, and the mystery lurking behind the hidden treasures. Let’s take a quick look at some of the facts that make this temple an intriguing eerie one.

The temple architecture is a classic blend of typical Kerala architecture and Dravidian style particular to TamilNadu. Sri Padmanabha Swami Temple is often referred to as the world’s richest temple with huge reserves of assets and wealth well preserved inside the different chambers of the temple. It’s for this reason that the temple is dubbed as the ‘Golden Temple’.

The main presiding deity of the temple is Lord Vishnu in his characteristic reclining pose on serpent Adisheshan. This posture of the Lord is called by the Hindus as ‘Anantha Shayanam.’  There have been mentions of the shrine in several places in popular Hindu sculptures such as Varaha Purana, Skanda Purana, Brahman Purana and Mahabharata.

Once you’re inside the temple, you can find six chambers in the temple. This is the point beyond where things tend to get murky. The Chamber B, as it is known here, has never been opened hitherto by anyone, inspite of the growing voices within to open the same and make matters open to public view. It is widely believed that this chamber is the home to the idol of Sri Padmanabha Swamy, Srichakram (a.k.a mother of all yantras), and that it is laden with incalculable quantities of wealth and other valuables. People dread the idea of opening the chamber as they believe it can put them to gravest dangers.

Though the temple holds several festivals, the Laksha Deepam festival, is the most followed one, where the temple premises and structure dazzle brightly with one lakh lamps lit to grace the festival that is celebrated once in 6 years. If you are in Thiruvananthapuram next time, make sure you visit the temple just to explore its profound mysteries, if anything.