Tirupathi and Sri Kalahasthi visit II

This is the continuation of the previous blog...

The MiDnIgHt Conversation:

Well, after we had the nice dinner on saturday and returned to the guest house,we indeed tried to sleep. But the power nap that we had made it impossible for us to even get a wink :). So when I suggested that we go out and chat for "10 minnutes", I had an overwhelming response, with Anand and Venkatesh already outside!! Soon RP also joined us and there we were chatting about everything from black magic, politics, Indian culture, temples, don't know what all... When it was 00:45 on Jul 22, 2007 (Sunday), it was time for the AngaPradhakshinam guys to start. So, those four guys started and I & Anand tried to catch some sleep and eventually succeeded at 02:00. It was raining heavily outside!!!!

The descent:

We woke up at 05:15 to get ready for the descent. Three of us (I, Anand and Venkatesh) were to get down by walk (thru steps) while the other 3 were to take a jeep with our luggages (old people :)). We started climbing down at 06:15. Initialy, we were pretty slow as we were bare footed and we also felt the strain of yesterday's walk. We ate pori, manga etc and even had our breakfast just before Gali Gopuram. We chose a particular shop because the TV there was playing the Telugu version of "Pokiri" but as luck would have it, a kid who was operating the DVD player rewinded and played the opening scene some 4 times and that was what we got to watch :(. But this stretch was total fun and we literally enjoyed every step that we climbed down :). Our legs were not in our control, shaking, moving fast and aching and we were laughing through out. We will end up taking four steps when we actually intended to take only one! I repeat, it was GREAT FUN and the most memorable part of the trip... The irony was, out of the 3550 steps, around 1200 steps covered 7 km stretch while teh remaining 2300 steps covered a meagre 2 km!! We eventually reached the footsteps at 09:30, whereas we actually thought we will be able to climb down in 1.5 hrs :)

Sri Kalahasthi:

In the meantime, the other three guys had reached down and preponed our return to Bangalore by the 15:45 bus. So we had 6 hrs to cover Kalahasthi and Tiruchanoor. We booked a taxi to cover the two places. Tirupathi and Kalahasthi were 40 km apart. We reached Kalahasthi in less than an hour. When we tried to get a Rs. 30 Darshan ticket and go inside, some ____ there said that he can help us get a special darshan at Rs. 500 for 6 people. We din't have an idea of the crowd and hence took up that option to know that it was no different from the actual ticket. We had paid him Rs. 200 and would have been better off had we chose the initial 30 Rs. ticket :(. Still, we had a good darshan at both the Sannadhis (with Abhishekam at the Ambal sannadhi
:)).

Tiruchanoor:

After Kalahsthi, we reached Tiruchanoor at around 13:30 and finished our darshan, thus completing whatever we had set out to complete :))). Not much rush in Tiruchanoor and we had a great Darshan, needless to say She was looking awesome!!

The Stunt:

If you think that our trip to Kalahasthi has nothing else to mention about, then you are surely mistaken. The taxi driver almost finished us off, when he tried to overtake a lorry without seeing a jeep coming on the other side. Luckily he avoided a head on collision by turning and braking at the right moment. Our Sumo made a creaking sound and turned almost 180 degrees on the road and stooped with it's back towards a bush. Fortunately, there were no vehicles coming from behind. Surprisingly, none of us shouted during this, perhaps everyone had thought that the inevitable is gonna happen, just as I did :). Well, we were having our conversation about black magic, some one remarked that, the skull of the first child in the family helps in getting supernatural powers. After we escaped, some witch somewhere has missed three such skulls (Mine, RP's and Srini's ;D).

The comedy:

To add to this, the driver went missing at Kalahasthi when it was time to start after darshan. We looked out for him for half an hour and eventually found him by making an announcement in the Temple's speaker system!! Surely, Kalahastheeswarar had caused this delay and retained us for good :)

Well, something happened (which I won't write here for parliamentary reasons) with Srini in the bus stand. We boarded the bus on time after a nice lunch and reached Bangalore by 21:30. Took a taxi and reached home.

This again was a memorable experience. Hope this would bring all of us all the goodies that we wanted.

Om Namo Venkatesaya

Om Nama Shivaya

:)