24 hours of spiritual fantasy

This time its not trekking but unexpectedly yet another adventure trip…. You cant always unplan all the trips and expect it to be enjoyable… The (un) royal pilgrimage started on last Thursday night… we were anticipating a lengthy period of outing as the next 3 days were holidays and the place TIRUPTHY is famous for its overflowing crowd on holidays….

We booked a quails and it has to be white board as we got to cross the border… (yellow board vehicles should pay 3000 rs. Tax on the state border---enna koduma sir ithu) apparently this will be an expensive transport for us even though we hired a white board cab…. It took around 7 hours to reach as its night time, raining and the roads are narrowly narrow… we reached the foot of the hill around 1 am… realized that the 50 rs. Payment ticket counter will open only at 5 am in the mrng… the irritating scene was that there were 200-300 ppl already formed the queue … we had no patience to wait… as few of us had contacts with the authorities in the temple, we had a confidence that we can get through some how… so we started to walk to the top….





The walk was yet another for me as I visited the place several times by walk… my friends had a mixed feelings of excitement, devotion, agony, pain etc…. We reached the top like 9 am… (hehehe we slept for 2 hours in the pavement in the middle of our walk) then one of my mate’s cousin working in the temple pushed us inside the free darshan queue around 12 afternoon… we were put in the cage for around 9 hours (yaaa lions should be caged, innit?) that was our time to get good long sleep… but the pain was heavy as the wait frusturated us more… the whole mountain is full packed with pilgrims from all over India (mainly from south)… I don’t remebr wen I last went on a free darshan queue and this time I properly seen the other side of India… the gang was mostly lower middle class and lower class people and few had no idea about paid ticket and ended up in the free queue….

I can very well listen to those typical quarrels happening here and there…. But am in no mood to enjoy those as I was desperate to finish up the darshan and leave the place same night…. The cages are opened at 9.30 pm … and the people cant wait to get themselves ahead…. All started running mad…. Hahaha.. few peoply were swearing at others like ‘Why the hell these people are mad and running like soldiers for war’ but the funniest part is they were one among those front runners…. Ofcourse, human irony… one cant complain…. Every one has this…

The queue was moving at snail’s pace and we finally managed to finish around 1 am … then a bit of food …then on our way back to Bangalore…. I will list out the key points to be noted/learn in this trip…

- The whole trip turned out to be totally hectic with our lack of planning and this wasn’t exciting or funny like our usual trekking… this is supposed to be more a spiritual trip and we should have our comfort with proper planning….

- The travels guys were cheeky in their tariffs… we paid bloody 1000 bucks on top of our estimation with their stupid rules that wasn’t fair at all…. We cant argue much and we paid the amount he asked for.

- It was raining on most of the way we walked… although we enjoy the rain, I haven’t this time as it was not a fun tour or I wasn’t in that mood to enjoy other stuffs apart from the darshan… but my advice would be to carry a rain gear all the time when you have to walk…

- The food was lavishing and awesome like always with andra food….. I just loved the 6-7 idlis, 1 dosa and a lemon soda that I had in the middle of our mountaineering ;)

- Good opportunity to see various levels of people at one place… all mostly fighting for their privacy in that totally undisciplined public place… (am sorry am not blaming any human for this… as I mentioned, its human irony… am no different)

- Never ever in free darshan queue again in my life…. I normally wouldn’t mind the difficulty that I encounter in any temple visit .. this time it was extreme and testing..

- the smell of the ladoos near the temple, the sound of the balaji songs, the well formatted streets, unorganized crowd, the scenic view of surrounding hills… will make feel ecstatic….and nudge one to come again and again….

- the darshan was awesome and I feel the energy in me when I had the full view of my favourite lord of seven hills…. After all I feel more privellaged to be a hindu and a devotee of balaji as I feel the good things happening in my life is pushed well and maintained by this supreme force… If you are an aethist I would still recomed you to visit this temple to realize the changing energy levels in you ( nothing super natural… pure science)

Here is the video clip made by mate to shortly present the whole trip in a nutshell of pics :)