How to Travel Responsibly to Religious Shrines

Isn't it disheartening sometimes to see the pathetic condition of religious shrines in India? Definitely, it is, but are we doing to improve the situation? The answer is nothing. The majority of Indian population has a sad thinking that it is someone else's job to clean every place, so they do not want to lift their finger to make an effort to clean the mess or just not contribute to making it filthier. Whenever we go to a temple, we tend to spread filth without thinking much. Never even once it crosses our mind that we should look for a dustbin before we throw the empty wrapper of chips, toffees, polythene, or empty soda bottles.

Whether we go to a substantial religious shrine or a petite temple in your neighborhood, one thing is common at every place. We offer sacred food or prasadam to God, believing that whatever we eat, we should offer it to our deities first. Such are our values of the Hindu culture that we do not want think about ourselves before thinking about God. By offering food to God, we believe that the materialistic food is transformed into the spiritual blessings of our deity.

However, while doing so we forget that we should offer food wisely. Any well-maintained temple would distribute all the prasadam it receives to the devotees only. None of the food goes waste if the administration of the shrine maintains it well. Even if you are a traveler, not a devotee, it is your duty to stay away from spreading litter, in the form of sacred food as well. If you see that a shrine is not taking care of the offerings of the devotees, stay away from offering anything that you think will go waste.

The worst thing to witness at temples is the food lying under the trees and in front of idols of Gods. All of this food decays, smells, and attracts flies to the temple complex. In some shrines, the situation is so bad that it becomes difficult to even walk around the temple complex. And when you are there at such a place, the last thing that would come to your mind is the dedication to worship God. No matter how hard you try, you cannot evoke religious feelings in your heart.

Religious tourism is a grand industry in India and abroad. Considering the massive number of tourists we welcome every day in the country; we need to be responsible to at least maintain cleanliness in our temples. Every religious city becomes excessively crowded during festivals, and it becomes even more crucial to take care of the sentiments of people who come from the far-flung regions of the world to visit the Indian temples. We cannot expect to carry on our tourist with this attitude towards God and the pilgrims.

People take so much pain to visit various places in India, and it is entirely unfair to them to give them nothing regarding facilities in return for their dedication. People come using Self-Drive Car Rental Mumbai to visit the Mumba Devi Temple, for example, and their commitment should be well rewarded. Many other temples in the city such as the Shree Siddhivinayak Ganapati Mandir, Shree Mahalakshmi Temple, etc. are just some of the shrines in India that are well-maintained. We need to be responsible pilgrims and tourists if we want our country to flourish as a tourist destination. Carrying on with an irresponsible attitude will not take us a long way in the time to come, only a sensible conduct can do that.

I, Manoj Upadhyay, a digital marketer by profession, believe in just that! I cherish each aspect of life, which has driven me to the idea of my blogging website, namely Wandererfoodie.