A Trip to Tirupathi

A trip to Tirupathi was always in our plate. Planning and executing them with the little one was a challenge. We had our family friend's who had joined us for Gemini circus for this trip as well. We decided to drive in our Cheetah (that's how L calls our little Santro :) ) and did the room booking at Tirupathi devasthanam to stay at Tirumala hill rather than staying at Tirupathi. There are good options available to book a room but we have to do it much in advance. The site doesn't work the way it should at times but not very bad. For booking, we should have our photo of 10 KB size. We can also make seva bookings here but these bookings get over immediately after the opening (much faster than the railway reservations for summer vacations). There are also some disadvantages in booking here. We cannot cancel our booking and the person who has booked the room should be there in person to occupy it. Friends/ relatives/ Dependants cannot go in his/her name. We booked it for 17th March 2012 and were eagerly waiting for the trip as it's been long since we travelled out. My mother-in-law had wished to make offering of thulabaram at Tirupathi if its a baby boy. Yes! The craze for baby boys always exists in India though girls outsmart boys in all means. All the homes at L's village have atleast a son. There are 45+ boys and just 4 girls in L's generation. Strange but true and so, I have one or other co-sister to chit-chat :D. I decided to do head tonsuring as well for Akil as Tirupathi is known for it and there is a belief that he will have good hair if we do it there. Aadesh also accompanied Akil for this head tonsuring. So, thulabaram and head tonsuring was there in our plan. I & Sugi planned so much to prepare food for kids and decided to take electric stove and other things.

With all plan set, Bala anna & family came to our home the previous night so that we can start off early the next day without any hassle. To add flavour to this much excited trip, Sugi & I planned to prepare lunch for all of us and to wake up at as early as 3 AM. To my dismay, Akil got up at 1 AM the next day and was so fresh. With his whispers and shouts, Sugi was also forced to get up at 2 AM. We started off with our cooking and this woke up the men at home also. But with kids, how can things happen quickly !?! We started off at 6 AM with all things packed up. We took Kolar-Chittoor route to Tirupathi. With the suggestions by Tirupathi native's and other reviews that we glanced through, we expected the roads to be too good. When someone says road is good, we think of the roads to be NH 4 lane roads till Tirupathi. Only the first 80 kms was the road we thought of. The next 150 kms was not bad but not to the expectation. There were no dividers in between which was the biggest drawback in those roads.

Here is the route we took: Bangalore (KR puram) -Hoskote- Kolar - Mulbagal - Palamner - Chittoor - Puthalapattu - Chandragiri - Tirupati



Naughty Kids - They can sit, just for a pic

Before we entered the hill ride, there was a checking done and we were asked not to take electric stove. I wonder why they have such a rule. How can an electric stove breach their security? But Tirupathi is one of the most corrupted I believe. With bribery in place, anything and everything can be taken. For any small work, the staff's of devasthanam & police ask for money. In between, a policeman stopped us and simply asked for 50 Rs. Policemen usually have a reason like driving license, over speed, etc to ask for money. But this was without reason. Crazy! We should just ignore such things to have a peaceful trip and thus, gave him what he asked for.

Feeding food for Akil was not an easy job. Bread and Jam are one of Akil's favourite's as there is the factor of sugar in it. With this, he was able to survive but this was the reason for our delay. After we reached Tirupathi, the hunt was for the room location. We should go to CRO office and give the print-out of the booked room. They do photo verification and ask for our figure prints. Some amount of caution deposit was also asked. We had booked two rooms for two families and the expectation was to get the rooms close by. But it so happened that the two rooms were to the extreme end's of Tirumala. Here is when, we regreted for booking room at Tirumala.

The next action item was to eat lunch and prepare the naughty kids for head tonsuring. There was a room close to the place where we stayed for this head tonsuring and was asked to come in queue. Charge was 20 Rs per head. There was separate hot water tap kept where we are asked to wet the hair of kids. Akil cried throughout but was not weeping post that. This was 4th head tonsure for him. Compared to the last two, he was much better this time. Aadesh didn't cry much. We were happy that both the kids accepted it to an extent.

We got them ready and by the time, we stepped in to the temple, it was 7 PM. We expected to see God by 9 PM or worst by 11 PM. But the crowd was huge and some VIP had visited during this time where they were forced to stop the queue for hours together. By the time, we saw Lord Venkatachalabathi, it was 2 AM. Akil was entertatining everyone for sometime but as time went by, sleep overwhelmed him that he was naggy and sleepy. Just before entering the temple, there is a place to give thulabaram. The wish was to give sugar candy to the weight of Akil. This part was smooth. We got ladoo's for our tickets and were allowed to buy more ladoo's. Cost was Rs 100 for two extra ladoo's. We walked to the room and reached around 3 AM and slept for hours together.

We did some shopping and started back at 4 PM on Sunday. We have to be too good in bargaining to buy any product from there. They will easily give the product at 50% of the amount they say.

On the way back in the hill, there is a deer park. We are allowed to give carrots to the deers and carrots are sold there. There were also different breed of monkeys. Akil was sleeping and missed to see the deers. We took some photos. This is what he says seeing this photo. "Appa deer mammam" (Appa is giving food for deer is what we should interpret :) )

It was altogether a great trip indeed.