It’s been some time that I and my family had decided to visit our KulSwami - Yogeshwari which is located in Ambajogai in Beed district. When I first decided , I though I could well plan my travel by using internet as medium but unfortunately there were not a lot of references that were available to plan for this .

So below is my itinerary around my travel to Yogeshwari @ Ambajogai. Although there are various other travel forms like direct buses , state transport buses that are available we preferred the below mode of transport.

1) Travel to Ambajogai ( From Mumbai - Pune to Latur) : We made reservations on CST - Latur Superfast express from both Mumbai and Pune since we had my family joining us from Pune as well. The train is a decent enough and has timing to suit working class people. The train leaves CST at 9:00 pm and arrives at Latur at 6:00 am in the morning. The journey is relaxing and is it like you sleep down and wake up and you land up at Latur. Since some of my family had to join in Pune , the train reaches Pune at around 12:30 am.

2) Travel to Ambajogai ( From Latur to Ambajogai ) : We reached Latur at around 6:30 am in the morning ( The train was late for a 0.5hrs but who care we had a good night sleep ). We had booked a rent a car for whole day which was on the spot at 6:30 am to pick us up for our travel to Ambajogai. The road through Latur into Beed is an extremely nice journey of around 45-50 Kms ( around 1 hrs journey ). The road in Latur are extremely good but the quality of road deters as we enter Beed district. The journey was nice in wee hours of morning wading through paddy fields giving is the taste of rural life.

3) Stay at Ambajogai ( Hotel Krushnai) : After a lot of soul searching before the travel we had booked a room at Hotel Krushnai which is around 1 Km from the temple. We had booked an A/C room but due to load shedding most of the time electricity was not with us and personally A/C is not required. So my recommendation would be to go for a non-A/C room. A/C room cost 750 Rs per day and non-AC room should be 500 Rs per day ( I did not enquire of this ). The rooms are good , clean and neatly done and I was extremely satisfied of the support provided by the Krushnai staff.

4) Visit to Temple ( Yogeshwari ) : After getting fresh at the hotel , we than made our way to temple through busy marketplace ( mandai ) ... The temple is nice and moderately maintained and could have been done better since the Yogeshwari is Kulswami of majority of people from Konkan region. But the goddess is simply amazing and darshan was a treat. The devi reflects power and is adorned with Navari saree and ornaments. If you have planned to do Abhishek along with Darshan you will have to get in touch with priest early since the Abhishek time ends at 12:00 pm. The highlight on the prasad is something called "TAMBUL VIDA" which is made out of bettlenut and paan. Also it is recommended to have food at one of the priest house which is also a homely experience. Menu include Puran Poli my favorite and that too unlimited along with food served typical of Marathi pangat.

5) Visit to Parli Vaijnath : We also visited temple of Shiva which is around 25 kms from Ambajogai. The antiques present in the temple where something to look for along with the Shivling.

6) Return Back to Pune - Mumbai : After an exciting day of entourage it was time to bid goodbye to Ambajogai with a promise of returning at regular intervals. We had booked the Latur express again which leaves around 22:30 pm from Latur. So we left Ambajogai at around 7:45 pm and dropped in at Hotel Mewad for a sumptuous meal. Mind you it is difficult to find good restaurant in Ambajogai and Hotel Mewad ( Punjabi Food) and Hotel Panchavati ( Thali ) is a good food place. We reached mumbai around 7:45 am at Dadar and folks of Pune reached at 4;15 am.

Some of the PROS : Nice travel , Decent Hotels , Goddess

Some of the CONS : AttiMr_Customer of priest