It has been a good ending to this year, during these last 10 days I was able to travel to couple of religious and spiritual places. It became a little of a discomfort because of my ill health but then I did not even want to miss it. Week before last I went to Shirdi and Meherabad. In Shirdi is the main temple of Sai Baba and in Meherabad it is the final resting place of Meher Baba. Both of them were spiritual gurus of their time and till date a lot of people have a strong faith in them and they have a massive following. I too have faith in them and once a year I do make it a point to visit these places and spend some time. I also got a chance to visit the Mount Mary Church, which really felt like a blessing.

Then I planned a trip to my religious place which is Udwada, where we have the main Fire Temple which is called Atashbehram. We Zoroastrians worship God through Fire, we believe that all the elements of nature hold position next to God and Fire is the element which purifies our Soul and it is also the element which cannot be polluted, if anyone tries to pollute they themselves will burn down in it. Fire in our religion is the symbol of purity, righteousness and truth.

It was a good time to visit, because during this time, there is also a cultural festival that happens for 2.5 days in this place. Udwava is a very small village, well it was at once upon a time, but like all other places this place is also expanding and growing and I now feel it's no more a village and it's becoming like a town. But in all of that the beauty and charm of this place is getting lost. Before only we Zoroastrians travelled to this place but now it has become like a tourist attraction, though there is nothing fancy about this place, but people come here out of curiosity to see the Fire Temple, which again they can only see from outside and not enter inside.

This festival has started happening since 2015, which was initially on a very small scale, but every year it keeps getting bigger attracting lot of eyes on this place. This is my first time when I have been here around this time, or normally I prefer to visit in the first week of January or sometime in August as that's one of our holy month.

This is how the event is planned, with fun activities, cultural programs, religious ceremonies and guest speakers. I would have loved to attend the whole event but I had to return back today to Mumbai and my train tickets were already booked, which would have been a hassle of cancelling and rebooking. Anyways there is always a next time and may be next year it will be bigger then this also and I will be able to attend.

The whole street till the venue has been lit up with lights.

The banners that you see are some of our prayers and the translation to it, because they are in Persian language.

There is a big stage set up, some hours before the event when I reached there to see what's going on, there were rehearsals happening.

I entered from the backside of the stage and I was quite surprised with the size of everything, I did not expect such a huge set up.

There were many other mini setups also

This symbol is called Ashofarohar, in short it is the representation of struggle that we have in our life on daily basis between the good and the evil, and through this symbol we are taught to live life with 3 main principles. Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds. We mostly wear it as a pendant in a chain, keeping it close to the body so that on a daily basis we are reminded of living a righteous life. There is a lengthy explanation to this whole figure with each of it's part, which may be I can do some other time.

I id not get a chance to see any activities of the festival but I got some feel of it by even just seeing the set-up. Next year for sure I am not going to miss it.

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