“Today the #XploreBharat Blog Train has come to the places closest to my heart, where my life changed completely and for good, the place where I found love of my life. It’s a small town in western Vidarbha in Buldhana district. Its Chikhli Mywordsmywisdom from Gokarna, Karnataka with Sanjota

I completed my 12th at Nagpur and got admission in electronics engineering in one of the colleges there, however the wave of doing engineering in computer science was all time high, hence I opted the 30% admission quota which promises desired branch but location can be any out of the ten choices given. As destiny had it, I got listed in the tenth choice that I had in my form. Anuradha engineering college, chikhli. It was not a very exciting option for my parents as chikhli is a lot small than Nagpur, and they were not sure how will I adjust. Anyways, I went there and studies continued till I met my now husband, when we were anchoring for a prize distribution ceremony of our college annual fest. And love changed my perception for the town as well. I can write pages and pages about US, however its XploreBharat train so let me get back to the location details.

Chikhli is beautiful small town at the bank of river Painganga
It has Cool climate compared to other places in vidarbha region. Summer is also not so hot as compared to other Vidarbha regions.

The beat time to visit is monsoon as the greenery gets a boost.

Lots of farms and small hills make it look beautiful.
Cotton, sorghum and other cereals, oilseeds, soybean, sunflower, and groundnuts are the predominant crops grown in the district. It has considerable contribution in production of Amla and grapes

How to reach:

Bus: Chikhli is connected with all major cites by bus routes, with government as well as private service providers. It connects you directly with Aurangabad, Jalgaon, Jalna, Akola, Nagpur and many villages around.

Train: There is no railway station in chikhli or in Buldhana. You have to travel to railway junctions like Malkapur, Akola, Bhusawal and Shegaon to board a train. These 4 cities connect important cities like Chennai, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Calcutta, Raipur, etc.

Air: The nearest airport is at Aurangabad which is 135 kms. From there you can take either a cab or bus.

In the vicinity of the bus stop there are various Hotels, restaurants and guest houses. However, if you really are a foodie and want to get taste of authentic local food, garb an auto as k him to take you to ‘mehkar fata’. This place has marvellous dhaba’s. out of which shri and panjabi top our list for there paneer recipes. You can even savour spicy non veg curries too.
Places to Visit

Renuka mata mandir
In the centre of the city shri Renuka mata mandir is situated, this temple was built150 years ago. A fair is held every year on Chaitra shuddha Purnima, and Navratri is celebrated with lot of pomp and glory.

I loved the pedha, that is the prashad which you can buy outside the temple. In four years, I have visited this temple surely more than 100 times. Its clean, quiet and beautiful.

There is a clock tower also at a walking distance, it was built during the british regime.

Around chikhli there are few places which are worth visiting

Lonar Crater:

Lonar Lake, also known as Lonar crater, is a notified National Geo-heritage Monument, you can even see the geological survey of India board there. Scientist say that this lake was created due to impact of an asteroid or meteor falling at the speed of 90000km/hr. It is the only hyper velocity impact crater in basaltic rock anywhere in the world.

It’s a Trek to reach the lake. Lot of animals like deer, langurs can be spotted. Because of the blue and green algae on the water this is a paradise of migratory and local birds, Peacocks are seen very frequently.
Near the lake there is a place called Vishnu Gaya, which houses 15 temples together. Out of which gomukh is very important place.
As per mythology when lord Vishnu killed a demon called Lonasur his body was burning, and hence goddess ganga appeared here and washed his feet that cooled him down. Since then this water flow has not stopped.

You can get into the MTDC Resort which is spacious, Air conditioned and clean facility right in front of the crater. You can get local guide from the resort itself who can explain the things in detail as well as they will show you experiments to prove the water in the crater is Alkaline and have magnetic properties too.

One more place to see in lonar is Daityasudan Temple, this is a Chalukya period Temple of Aaditya means sun.

The shape of the temple is like a star, just like hemadpanthi style of architecture. The idol is made of Ore and looks like stone. Lot of carving is done of the walls of the temple.

One more important place to visit is Shegaon

Shegaon hosts Shri Gajanan Maharaj temple, he was a saint. The temple is built around his samadhi. Many people across maharasthra worship the saint. There is lot of facility for stay and food done by the sansthan, that takes care of the temple.

For tourists Shri Sant Gajanan Maharaj Sansthan has developed a tourist attraction called “anand sagar”. This place is a huge garden, where kids can enjoy a lot, in beautiful gardens, fountains and play area. Something similar to “lakshman jhula” is also built inside the park. There is an aquarium, open theater as well as vivekanand meditation center inside the park, which is amazing.

Some more places around chikhli are Balaji temple at Deolgaon Raja, where local people call it “prati-Tirupati”. Means replica of Shri Tirupati Balaji.

Even The ajanta Ellora caves and Aurangabad are beautiful tourist attractions which are close by.

If you are looking forward for a beautiful road journey on Ghats, and have a quite holiday you can get down to Aurangabad hire a self-driven car and roll. The entire region if highly populated hence ample number of hotels and resorts can be spotted.

you can explore one such awesome place from Southern India can Srirangam too.

The next stop of this #XploreBharat Blog Train is Naigara of India Chitrakote waterfalls near Jabalpur
This post is a part of the #XploreBharat Blog Train hosted by
Aditi, Esha, Maheshwaran, PraGun, Preeti, Saba, Sanjota, Sonia, Sudip, Suhasini, Supriya
Finally a big shout out to our sponsors KAIV and FABZANIA for taking this Blog Train experience even further.

KAIV

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