Om Sai Ram 🙏🏻
We went on a one-day spiritual trip experience to Leicester on March 4th 2023. All travel arrangements from London to Leicester and return were arranged by Ravi ji. We went to four temples. Ravi Ji also took care of local travel arrangements via Uber. The trip was both economical and rewarding. We covered four temples (in order): Swaminarayan BAPS temple, Hanuman Mandir, Jalaram temple, and Sai Baba temple.
We arrived at Leicester coach station around 10 AM, and from there we first went to the BAPS Temple. The temple has beautiful architecture, both outside and inside. Silence is reasonably enforced. The deities are gorgeous, and there is enough space inside to sit, pray, or meditate. After spending about 30 minutes there, we went to Hanuman Mandir, which was a couple of miles away. It is a small and cosy temple. We rendered our prayers, listened to a few bhajans, and on our way out, we were handed delicious rice and dhal for prasad. It was my first visit to any Jalaram mandir—a saint from Gujrat. I wasn’t aware that the Jalaram Mandir in Leicester was very popular and is known as the “Virpur of Europe”. I was glad that I was able to take the darshan of saint Jalaram, who is held in the same regard as Sai Baba of Shirdi by the people of Gujarat as well as his followers all over the world.
Our final stop was Sai Baba temple, which is celebrating its 10th year anniversary on Ram Navami this year, in 2023. The interior of Sai Baba temple bears resemblance to the temple in Shirdi.
When we arrived around 12:10 pm the Madhyan Aarti had just begun. We participated in the aarti and prayers, spoke to the temple priest who gave a brief background to the beginnings of the temple in Shirdi and the philosophy of how they run the temple on a day-to-day basis. There is also made up of Dwarakamai and Chavadi within the temple, located on the first floor. We went up and sat there listening to bhajans of Sai Baba and Hanuman Chalisa. I was personally looking forward for some quite time to meditate but due to bhajans I could not. This made me understand that I must also learn to quieten my mind in everyday hustle and bustle of life to achieve peace within. Finally, we bid our good bye to Sai Baba. The temple priest was kind enough to gift us with Baba’s shawls on our way out. We made it back to Coach station in good time and returned to London as planned and on-time.
I would highly recommend Ravi Ji’s spiritual trip to Leicester.
Om Sai Ram🙏
