From the hills of holyness - Tirupathi (Part 2 )

We reached Tirupathi on Saturday evening and decided on making the uphill journey happen the next day morning, due to lack of time and because of the heavy traffic that we saw on the road leading atop the hill.

We booked a room at Hotel Bhimas Residency for that nights stay. After spending close to half an hour refreshing ourselves, resting a little and clicking pics of the view from the room , we decided on heading to the Padmavathi temple which was approximately a 15 minute drive from our place. This temple is situated in a place called Thiruchanoor/Alamelumangapuram.




We reached the temple at around 7pm. After close to twenty minutes of waiting had a good darshan. One very annoying thing was that they had a continuous recording being played asking the devotees to take care of their belonging like they do in exhibitions and and other fairs which to me did not give the fulfillment of being in a temple.

To pacify all this I was super happy when I saw ladus being given as prasadam in this temple as well, like that in the thirumala temple. After having some ladus and packing the rest to share it with family and friends back home , I saw a group of people having some different kind of Prasadam and then it was time to go collect ours as well and this time it was some delicious hot pongal being served in cups made of dried leaf (thonai). I have always liked prasadam s given at temples right from the time I was a kid.

Once out of the temple, the small shops adjoining the temple selling accessories, toys, and stuffs that are unique to the place always adds on to my entertainment quotient be it in any place, so the next half an hour we spent walking around the streets around the temple.

For dinner we headed back to the hotel where we had booked to stay for the night. I remember even during our last trip to Tirupathi we had stayed at Bhimas Residency - nothing very special about the place, a good not so expensive place with all basic necessities.


(My next post on the trip uphill and darshan at the Tirumala temple is coming soon )

From the hills of holyness - Tirupathi (Part 1)

It was during one of the weekends we decided to make the long pending Tirupathi trip materialize. It was a bright Saturday afternoon when mom, dad and I started from Chennai to Tirupathi. It is a five hour long journey by road and we had booked a cab, so that we could just sit back and relax and enjoy as we travel past the green fields and mountains.



It gladly turned out to be less sunny in a few minutes from the time we started the trip and was even better when it started drizzling.. It took us close to three hours to get across the TamilNadu border, before which we took a small break for snacking alongside the last high way restaurant (Hotel Kasi) that we found after which hardly any caught our sight until we reached the town on Tirupathi. The food here was so yum, probably I was very hungry ( will make yet another post ans link it here for those of you who would like to know more about the restaurant).

It was an unusually large eat out for a restaurant along side the highway which served varied cuisines and also had other small shops where I also got the top up done for my mobile phone. We had some hot samosas with delicious chutneys and some masala chai as well.. Perfectly suited the weather and the relaxed weekend we were living.







Few hours on the road and I kept myself busy clicking pics of the green fields and mountains I came across and also munching on the boiled ground nuts that we got near the Tamil Nadu - Andhra junction.

After which I saw jalebi like words on bill boards and advertisements in shops, now I know I am in Andhra and few kilometers away from Tirupathi.




On reaching Tirupathi by around six in the evening, our driver suggested we visit the Tirumala temple in the evening as it would be less crowded than making a visit to the temple tomorrow morning, but looking at the huge flow of traffic uphill we decided to keep the temple visit for the morning just like the way we had initially planned.