Visually-Impaired Devotees Walk 65 Km To Visit Puri Jagannath Temple

Puri: Love for Lord Jagannath spurred two visually-impaired devotees to trek for 65 km to pray at the world famous shrine here.

The two devotees, Banshidhar Pradhana and Prashant Sahu of Bhubaneswar, walked all the way to reach Puri on Thursday.

After their arrival, a guide from Puri district administration helped them to visit the temple as well as pray to the sibling deities.

Banshidhar and Prashant are blind since birth. “Though we couldn’t see Lord Jagannath, but we could feel his presence,” said Banshidhar in an emotion-choked voice.

“We don’t need eyes to get darshan of the deities. Our devotion and love towards the deities helped us to get darshan,” he added.

“Due to Corona pandemic, we could not visit Puri for the past 10 months. We decided to come to Puri on the day of Saraswati Puja. Some of our friends also came with us. We started our journey from Naveen Basti near Satyanagar in Bhubaneswar on Sri Panchami i.e. on Tuesday. We had only water on the way. We didn’t take food before darshan of Lord Jagannath. This satisfaction, we have never felt earlier,” said Prashant.

Five of their friends could not walk. That is why they were taking rest near Malatipatapura. They will go for darshan on Friday, said Prashant.

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