This weekend I had been to Thirupati. The temple is the most holy place for the Hindus in south India. My parents had been pestering me since I got my job to drop a few bucks at the temple. They left me with no choice informing me on thursday that we were going.

Saturday 1st October 10:25 am

Dad was screaming at me as I slowly bit into my breakfast and reading Calvin and Hobbes… He ordered me to concentrate on my breakfast and finish it asap. I was done with my breakfast a few mins later and Dad enquired if my phone had roaming coz he had not activated it.

10:35 am

We were on the road finally… we were 5 mins late than time we had planned to start and I was still not sure if my cell had roaming.

It took us an hour to get out of the city and that was a bad sign… when you plan a journey its always better to make time than to lose time initially. Our tickets had to be picked up from my uncle’s friend at the Thirupati railway station and he was set to leave at 5 pm. Once out of the city we managed to gain time easily. My dad was ripping our Santro at 80-110 kph which is much better than a moderate 60-80 kph in a Maruthi 800. The roads were impressive and that took me by surprise but a nice surprise at that. Again helping us gain time…

There were many photos taken and the ones posted here are probably the best. This one was a patch of flowers along the road. There were many such patches along the way and thats a sight for sore eyes :).

We saw these burning piles near on the side of the road. The first one was of burning plastic. Now why would someone burn plastic well… it turns out that sticky substance you get after burning plastic can be sold. They pay around 10 bucks per kg of the gooey stuff and thats enuf for most ppl for a nice lunch. Well I dont blame them for spoiling the environment… its sad but they got to think about food more than about the environment. The second pile was of burning rubber it was for heating the tar that was to be put on the road. This a common practice almost all over India and it does no favors to the environment too.

3:15 pm

We finally decided to grab a little lunch. I had been postponing the mid day meal until we reached Chittor. The lunch was good and we were only an hour away from our destination guess what we had made enuf time :).

The lunch took a little longer than expected and we started at 3:45pm

4:52 pm

We were in Thirupati. The hunt for the railway station was short and Dad and I were combing the station in search for our man. We finally found him and he informed us that he had booked a room for us and got us the tickets for the “darshan” (Its the term Hindus use to refer to being in front of God).

We then drove to Thirumala. The climb to the top was spectacular. I took these snaps and they were all taken from the car at a speed of atleast 60 kph. Many photos turned out blurred but I had a decent number of them(around 75%) looking fine.

Some facts about Thirumala… Thirumala is the holy abode of Lord Venkateshwara. The temple is on the end of 7 hills from Thirupati. The number 7 is considered very holy and this route via 7 hills is the only way to get there. The temple is spectacularly rich and is considered one of the richest foundations in the world. Hindus pay their respects to Lord Venkateshwara by shaving off their heads at the holy place(I chose not to do that this time). He is considered the most giving god among all the Hindu Gods. Weirdly its believed that by giving to the temple we are paying back a loan taken by the lord when he walked the earth. This loan was so large that what ever the devotees give is considered hardly enuf for the intrest of the loan!!! But frankly there is no rule that people have to give when they are here and most ppl do it from their heart.

So we finally were on top of the mountain. The trip to the top is never boring so I never felt how time flew by. On the top we searched for our rooms and realized that we had to register for it. The registration took like an hour and that was the most boring part of the trip.

Our room was decent and as soon as we entered it Dad and I ran out to get the tickets from the second place. We planned to be back and resting in an hour or so but things turned out differently…

It seems another family was also here and they had taken our ticket slip. The unnerving part was that they had taken our ticket for 5 ppl and left their ticket for 2 ppl. It took about 3 hrs for the mess to get sorted but we had to endup getting new tickets as the other family was already inside the temple.

8:30 pm

We grabbed dinner and went back to our room to rest our eyes. We had to wake up at 3:30 am the next day.

Sunday 2nd October 3:30 am

Something about waking up at 3:30 am that is not very inviting. The cold water bath did not do much By 4:30 we were out and soon in queue at the temple. Its intresting but you can learn a lot about people from queues. An hour in the queue can be a torture for most ppl but I just look around and learn(more about that in another post). We were finally in front of the god… It took us totally about an hour to get there and thats much better than 24 hrs or 36 hrs most ppl used to spend in queue earlier. Surprising the next longest queue was to the “hundi”(place where we put our offerings to god). The rush at such places is bad and I truly dont enjoy being pushed from all sides.

My atheism actually becomes much stronger when I visit religious places. The fact remains that you get newer more complicated questions about god in such places than expected answers to prior questions. I wont go into the details about that right now.

The trip back was less eventful. We went to another temple on the way back and then headed home. I spent most of the journey with my head into my book and before long we were home.

It was a nice trip and my parents were satisfied and thats what counts :).