trip to tirupati..

Its friends brother's marriage. He invited many of us but due to tight schedule, a few decided to go. My plan was to visit the tirupati and the marriage ceremony. I was little curious what kind of the process they follow to marry, but bad luck this time due to our Indian railway. Anyway as a son of railway employee i should be aware of it and should be planned accordingly. I really call this bad luck the marriage process supposed to start at 9:30 AM and I was almost there half a mile away from the main station at 8:00 AM, and train got stuck due to traffic on station and since this was new city for me so I decided to stay in the train rather than leaving the train at outer where it was stuck for almost 2 hours. finally i got no choice i get down from the train and start searching for the place, but its already late. Then went to the hotel and get refreshed. My friend came with car and he took us to the place by the time only few guest and married couples left. We congrats both and presented the gift. So marriage was over I mean and the purpose for which I traveled from Hyderabad to tirupati was done. the weather was little cool due to rain in the morning so i thought of roaming around the city to have good time. 

But a religious girl and my colleague who came with me had different idea. She wants to visit the tirupati temple. She requested me to join with her, as I was not having any specific plan I agreed to visit the temple. All thought I was not thinking to go there as I heard of the crowd and long queues to get inside the temple. I also believe that God is every where so better be good he will bless you even if you are not going to his place. Then we started for uphill that is known as tirumala (down hill is called tripati), by bus. It wasn't new experience for me as i have already went to masoore and rishikesh. Bus was really fast on the hills roads and scenes was no doubt attractive due to cool climate of that day. Generally tirupati is kind of hot city of Andhra Pradesh. Now we were on top hill by first sight on entering tirumala it doesn't look like top hill place. It was very developed kind of place with good roads and lightning, full of crowds and shops, seems normal place like downhill. there starts different kind of experience, I don't say its was bad, yea it was different and little frustrating due to the policies and rules and regulation of the temple management. First they don't charge to get in to the temple but if you want to see your God then give money. This is the first place I ever seen that temple management charging fee for darshan ( seeing to God). But that wasn't the single thing, they also have various rates like some attractive company product, they have different kind of darshan ( to see ), special, normal, some more special depending upon date and time, some VIP also i guess. I was surprised but anyway thats okay i guess, We decided for special darshan but also getting tickets was problem, we had to walk around many places and finally we got the way to get special darshan. Now after submitting the shoes and mobile phones we were placed to a chamber from here that journey will start for the darshan. The gate opens once in half an hour and you have to rush through it to get into the queue. once you will come in to queue to the darshan of tiripati( our God) you can not leave the queue in the middle since there is no way out to this queue its almost three feet wide queue and also people making it two. Seriously i respect peoples' devotion if they are coming second time. now here many other queues will also join yours or let say yours will join other queues, these are different policies for darshan like if you are giving more money you can avoid some part of queue journey. No doubt its kind of cage where you have to move ahead only by pushes from back side. Some surprises will be waiting for you there some time you will see a parallel queue which is moving more faster than your queue and if you dare to ask someone why their queue is moving faster to the God, you will get reply like we have special, vip kind of darshan tickets. you will also feel your queue is sometime moving down some time up to the building and making circles of the main temple. Not only this depending upon the ticket you have you will allowed to take some short cuts, you must be knowing that i was not that lucky. Anyway i guess in 4 to 5 hours of queue journey you will finally reach to the center place, the golden temple where God will be waiting for us, since the many queues meet just before the main gate you can imagine how crowdy it would be. Finally as you enter to the God's place police will be pushing you to hurry up from there, better be prepare to watch our God, you will get 2 to 3 second or even less than, if you miss then it would be worse for you, because police will be pushing to get out from there and join the outwards queue, withing 5 second you will come you know you are again in the queue which leads to same gate but this time for getting out, Here I feel sorry for the people who are waiting to get into the same main gate for entering and for exiting. first they stop the entering people and they get out the people who are already inside then again they will allow others waiting people to come into. this way waiting time in the queue surely will increase. I surprised they are not making separate gates for entering and exiting to the main temple that way they are making life of devotees hard. But thats okay i guess our devotees have thinking like that the hard to get to darshan more you will be blessed. That may be the reason they have long queue taking circles to the main temple. I was thinking i can design better plan to visit the main temple even i am not civil engineer. So once you come out from the main gate no doubt you will be happy as you made such long journey to the God and finally succeed to get darshan. From here you are supposed to be relax, but the temple management have another plan for you. Now here you will find yourself in queue to get prasadam. Its okay its your reward to for that much struggle. Again you will get frustration if you want ladoos ( special kind of sweet, which also know shows that you really visited. as you are supposed to distribute sweets to people who comes to know that you have visited tirupati God ). There are again long queue for getting token for laddoos, another queue to get a bag for the keeping the laddoo, then finally go to the queue for getting the laddoo, After that much i bet you wont be having enough energy to roam around trumala, So i will suggest better get bus and come down and have a good rest.
next day when i was returning to Hyderabad I experienced good nature of Andhra Pradesh people, my train wasn't having pantry and i wasn't aware of this. So i was expecting hungry night, but a family was having plenty of food and they shared among the people, and no one doubt or denied to accept their offering, generally in north side its little strange no body will accept such food related offering in train due to crimes. So i too enjoyed their delicious food.