Once a little, little-known town in Maharashtra, Shirdi has grown to become one of the state’s most popular tourist destinations and sites for pilgrimages. The fame of this home of Maharashtra’s renowned saint has spread across state lines and into other lands. Owing to its immense appeal, throngs of visitors and devotees go to Shirdi in order to get shri Sai Baba’s blessings. The devotees firmly believe that a person who visits Shirdi will be blessed by Shiva and would be granted all of his desires. Strong faith in Shirdi sai baba attracts devotees to frequently, resulting in Shirdi constantly being teeming with Shirdi’s followers. Shirdi is a town in Maharashtra’s Ahmedngar district, around 75 kilometers from the Naishika railway station and about fifteen miles from Kopergaon. Major cities in Maharashtra including Mumbai, Pune, and Nashik are readily accessible from there. The center of Shirdi Village is home to the temple complex, which has an area of over 200 km2. It is made up of the lendi bag, chavadi, samadhi mandir, gurusthan, dwarkamai, and khandoba temple. In 1922, Shirdi Sai Baba Temple was constructed above Sai’s Samadhi. In this temple, the statue of Sai Baba was sculpted in 1954 from a single piece of Italian marble. The temple has an assembly hall that can hold up to six hundred worshippers at once. Wada, a large private residence, was the original home of Baba’s Samadhi, now housed at the Shirdi temple. Shirdi Sai Baba Temple was constructed by a prosperous devotee and a businessman from Nagpur named Gopalrao Booty. Baba gave Booty instructions to construct a home and a temple in a dream, which served as inspiration. The identical dream was experienced by Shama, another follower of Sai Baba. They each drew some preliminary drawings and gave them to Dixit, who then brought them to Sai Baba to get permission. The Shiridi temple began to take form once Baba gave them the go-ahead. Since the temple was made of stone, real building on it began in 1915 and was known as Dagadi Wada. One of the close followers, Shama, oversaw the ground floor and basement construction. Another close follower of Sai, Babusaheb, carried on the oversight task. When the structure was being built, Booty obtained permission to place a Murlidhar statue on the temple’s ground level. Following Baba’s physical demise, his remains was carried to the wada and stored there, close to the location where the Murlidhar monument was meant to be built. All year long, a plethora of followers go to this sanctuary of Sai. The location really bursts with a large flood of devotees, especially during the key Shirdi festivals of Shri Ram Navratri, Shri Gurupournima, and Shri Punyatithi. Thus, it is advised that you reserve a room at a hotel close to the Shirdi Temple in advance of your trip there. Travelers like and find more convenience in hotels that are close to the temple.
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