We woke up to Aarti in the ashram. We are coming down in elevation each day so it is less cold. We got up and got ready. Maharaj was already busy with his daily routine. There are local people coming and going. Tea was ready by 6:30 pm. We got ready and packed. We were ready to Leave by 7:30 am. We spoke to Maharaj for a sometime. He mentioned that he stopped allowing Parikramavasis who came in buses. They come and mess up the whole ashram. Cooking and throwing trash all over the place. He has to clean up after them. He decided he did not want to do that anymore. He is happy to host anyone who will respect the place. As always we gave money in the Hundi and we left. We started walking. Today again we were walking on the roads with very few trees. We walked till Noon and got in the car to find a lunch place. This area is sparsely populated and it difficult to find places to eat or stay. We drove for half Ann hour and came upon an old palace built by Gond Dynasty in the 16th Century. We spent about an hour looking around. As we are Parikramavasis entry was free. We drove in search of lunch. We finally found a nice place Midway Treat Restaurant. This is started by state government to encourage tourism. But many of them have shut down due to bad management. We were happy to see this one was working. I even ordered Veg Pizza. It was fairly good. We ate and started walking hoping to reach our 20 kms goal for the day. We stopped for Tea one place and they told us that we could take a short cut on foot and the car can go around the river. We followed the walk path and came to the River Bajra. We had not realized that we would have to cross the river in a boat. Luckily there was a boat that had just left. He came back Tom pick us up. There three ladies with a child in the boat. The ride was less than 15 minutes. We came to the other bank and found one man curious to talk to us. He was a laborer who had worked in Karnataka and was happy to meet us. We spoke to him for few minutes and found Sunilji with the car. We tried finding an ashram with a decent bathroom, but no luck. We finally went to King Fisher Hotel for the night. This place has a water park attached and a wedding garden. There was a wedding over the weekend. Baiju asked for sweets from the wedding and we got Special Gulab Jamun. The room was comfortable. There was hot water so I washed two days of dirty clothes. A challenge in ashrams due to proper bathrooms. But now I a good for next few days. We had dinner in the restaurant and went outside to find a game room below the restaurant. There games for all ages including a pool table. Baiju and I played a couple of games before we called it a night. Today we walked 17 kms.
