Tirupati Trip

Trip dates : Dec 7-8, 2007

Places visited: Tirumala - Tirupati, Kanipakkam, Kalahasti

During the India vacation, we had planned for a short pilgrimage to visit Tirupathi and surrounding areas. It was a memorable trip. Here in this blog, I would like to capture some of the memories of this trip....

We started on December 6, 2007 in Venkatadri Express and reached Tirupati on December 7, 2007 morning. We had taken a sumo for Tirumala and headed straight to Chairman's office for getting the recommendation for accomodation and Darshan(thru Rippunjaya Reddy). Getting accomodation was a bit tough even with recommendation and we had to wait for around 30 minutes to get the allottment at MBC-26 for VishnuPadam guest house. After freshing up, we started for darshan thru VIP Cellar Entry ticket(Rs. 100 per person). There was a lot of crowd as always and we could hardly get a two second glipse of Lord Venkateswara. When we were discussing the darshanam with disappointment, an unexpected event occured. When we were relaxing after darshanam in the temple premises, a security guard came to us and asked if we can give Hundi Witness. We were not aware of what an Hundi witness was and just accompanied the guard...The Hundi was sealed and we were asked to witness the sealing process and sign there. as a bonus we got free darshan and were very satisified with this unexpected divine blessings this time..:)

After Tirumala we headed out to Kanipakkam for Kanipakkam Vara Siddi Vinaya Swamy darshanam in the same sumo that had taken us to Tirumala. Kanipakkam was also crowded with majority of the devotees being Ayyappa Swamulu.. After visiting Varasiddi Vinayaka Swamy we went to the Manikantewara Swamy temple that is beside the Vinayaka temple. We had a peaceful darshan there and the pujari over there had recapped to us the history of the temple built by Chola maharaja in 1250AD to absolve himself of a dosha.

After that we headed back to Tirupati for nite stay at Ayodhya Lodge near Railways station.

Next day we started early at 6 AM to Kalahasti to reach on time there for Rahu Ketu puja during Rahu Kalam on Saturday(Which apparently is between 9:30 - 10:30 AM on saturday). After completing the satisifying visit we headed back to Tirupati and visited some more temples before catching the Venkatadri Express back to Hyderabad.