Hey everyone, how are you guys doing,hope you all are fine…so here I am back with my new blog,i know due to my previous blog and the current one that I am writing many of you must be thinking that I am an atheist,but let me tell you I am not. My only concern is to not let people fall in prey due to there religious beliefs .

Anyways so as my topic mentions that pilgrim places are becoming or have become money making market,so i feel this is true because I myself have felt this and if you also have been to any religious place you would also have noticed that anything or everything whatever you wish to buy is expensive at pilgrim places. Whether it's about the fare or offerings or even sweets.

I have visited two famous pilgrim places so far,one is in Haridwar i.e Mansa Devi which is a shakti peeth and the other one is Jagannath Puri. So i visited Mansa Devi last to last year and there the big problem was where to keep your belongings,so the shopkeepers near that place did something unusual they forced the devotees to buy offerings in the form of flowers,garlands and sweets and in return they would keep the belongings of the devotees with utmost safety,and the problem was if you don't buy things from them they wouldn't keep your belongings. So obviously we had no way out and we were forced to buy the offerings.

Now when i visited Jagannath Puri last month what eventually happened was that when we went inside the temple with a lot of difficulty,then we thought to buy the famous Mahaprasad and to our astonishment that simple offering costed Rs100. Which was costly according to the things given in the box. Not only this in many pilgrim places there's a man made ritual that if you want to apply a tilak on your forehead or even if you want the priest to tie the sacred thread on your wrist,then you have to pay some amount. This is also one thing I don't find reasonable.

Another major thing I have noticed is the sum of money taken in the form of bribery to promote V.I.P culture. This basically means if you offer a desired amount of money to the priest or to the staffs than you don't have to stand for long in the queue to wait for your turn to offer prayers.

Not only this but the priest who perform death rituals also charge a lot of money and ask for various unnecessary demands in the form of honorarium .

These are some of my observations so far, we often blame the education sector to be the money making market but if we observe pilgrim places these are also on the top list. Atleast in education sector if you are paying money, you are getting education, you are getting hands on experience, degree and job. But if you are coming to a religious place due to your devotion there's no guarantee you are getting any thing for sure. So i guess government needs to take some steps to decide the reasonable prices of things and services which are being sold or provided near pilgrim places. So that visiting pilgrim places would not only remain a dream for some people. This was my thought, what do you think about it, please let me know in the comments below.