Trip To Tirumala

4th July - With little sleep on Friday night after the movie Oy!, we (Subba, Venky and me) woke up to Saturday morning at 7 A.M. By 8:30 we were on the roads headed towards Tirupathi. Just outside the city we stopped over for breakfast at Kamat. The article on Michael Jackson left me wondering on the amount of material published on him in the last few days. It also left me an urge to buy his hits though that never happened in the trip. The sun was little easy on us for the whole journey. That ensured a comfortable ride expect for a minor detour into the villages as the traffic got struck on the main road with protests over hike of fuel prices. The detour was however a nice experience driving among the greenery and the narrow banks of the river with a minor stop at a farm. By 2 P.M, we were in tirupathi to join our friends from my native place Saagar, Seshu and Indra.

Like most others this was very much an unplanned trip. However, one good thing we did was to get the contacts to procure tickets for early morning darshan. I mean good if we ignore the fact that we paid the double the cost for them. After lunch in Woodlands and a little rest, we went up to Tirumala to collect our tickets and to check the availability of cottages. The drive through the ghat roads in the teasing rain was a nice one with the distant mountains playing hide and seek in the mist formed by the rain. As we were inquiring for the tickets standing under a tree, a mango fell of the tree right beside us. Got to mention that it was tasty one. We got the darshan tickets but not the accommodation on the top. The recommendation from M.P didn't help a bit. When we saw people waiting for long hours with similar letters in hand, we just drove down the hill and were back to our hotel.

The darshan was scheduled for 5:30 A.M. Irrespective of certain guys waking up at 3 A.M, it was past 5:30 by the time we checked out and started up. On the way we made a little stop at the petrol pump. The usual lethargy in the early morning to get out of the car and check the meter cost us 200 bucks. I hate this robbing at the petrol pumps. I hate these souls and i wonder if they do it at the instructions of the owners. Anyway, leaving that behind, we were on the top by 6:30. Quite opposite to my predictions, the queue was still open for us. Four of us finished our darshan in an hour but with our little mistake the other two who were to join us at main entrance weren't allowed in. We had to wait for another 3 hours for them to get in as everything came to a halt to make way for Anil Ambani's visit. Meanwhile Subba went missing. After looking for him at the exit for almost an hour we walked back to the car to find him sitting there with the newspaper and the laddoos beside him. Once Saagar and Seshu were into the temple, they were out with in half an hour and we started down the hill.

After dropping Saagar and Indra at tirupathi bus stop we were on our way back as the songs from Kick, Gunde Jhallumandhi, Gopi Gopika Godavari, Pournami, Chirutha and Bujjigadu played on the stereo. With one stop after Chittoor for mangoes and another one for lunch under the mango trees, we were to back to Bangalore by 7 P.M as the trip meter touched 620 km.