This was the first trip with my office colleagues/ friends to say formally and also it was my first trip to Tirupati!! (Don't you guffaw here). Informally its our Balcony batch. A highly insane group within my office who spends more than half of their office hours gossiping and laughing in the balcony. Slowly its glory faded when Buys(balcony guys) quit this company. It happened with 4 out of 10 (9 Software Engineers+ 1 HR).
Before Day 0
It was never possible to convince all the group members for the trip. With many hiccups, the plan started to materialize but 2 buys expressed their inconvenience for the trip before the last moments( Kiran kumar of Hyd and Ajay Kumar of Pune). Another buy Kiran Shankar almost tried to skip the trip but on much emphasis he was back to the gang for 2 out of 3 days.
But Why Tirupati and not any other place like Goa? Reason is simple. We had only a weekend to spare and atmost 1 day (monday- 24th dec) to bunk. The next day 25th dec is a holiday for X-mas and we can RIP (Rest in Peace).
The only planning we did for trip was to book our train tickets to tirupati for Venkatadri Express. We didn't book our room and darshan tickets to tirupati at the TTD (Tiruamala Tirupati Devasthanam) Counters in Hyderabad. Reason? We didn't move our lazy asses. So we had to rely purely on recommendations. We didn't realize what we may go through in our trip..
On Day 0 (Dec 21' 07)
Dec 21st 07.. Bakrid Day.. 7 of us had to start in Venkatadri Express at 8 pm to Tirupati. The crew arrived . I and Kiran had to hurry for the train. 1 more guy (Bhanu) would catch up with us on the next day by starting from Bangalore.
Day 1 (Dec 22' 07)
We reached Tirupati without any pains in the train. Took a hotel for 1 hr to get refreshed. Our HR had to rush 7 of us to get ready quickly and we did in a rapid fire 55 min.
Reached Alipiri in a auto( the foot of the tirumala hill). To my surprise not only my friend from bangy but 3 of his friends also joined us but it did add fun to the group. So now we were 7 buys from Hyd and 4 from Bangy.
Members in the pic from Left -Srinu, Santhosh, Santhu, Purush, Kiran, HR,Bhanu,Neo, Praveen (Prasad taking the pic and Rishi joined us later)
All of us resolved to reach tirumala by foot. This is a 9km journey on foot up the hill. Now where does a software Engineer does this much of walking? Hardly any. We took it as a mission Kargil or something even more serious and were driving every bit of our energy to reach the hill. The toughest part was the initial 2000 steps and then the journey was smoother with plainer ghat road, scenic waterfalls to play like a kid, fruits and cool drink stalls in between to boost us with more energy. It was kind of embarrassing to see kids and ladies walking up the hill with ease and we guys struggling to reach high. Like i said it was only the beginning that pained a lot but then we got used to it :)
Finally we reached the hill by 3 pm. The tough times have started. We had to look for our rooms, atleast 2 for 11 members. Now recommendations in Tirumala is one thing which may or may not work, infact it depends on the rush of the devotees. We happened to go at one such crowded days. The first failure- My friend couldn't get rooms and darshan tickets from his contacts in Syndicate bank while we were ultra confident of getting one.
I had the recommendation (reco) from Vijaya Bank. Forget about the tickets, we had a tough time to find that Vijaya Bank at first. Everyone told us about a different Vijaya Bank Counter while we had to find this actual Vijaya Bank. Instead of being setback at the first failure, I had to
take things in my hand(By then our legs were paining terribly and energy sapped from body). I and HR set out to find Vijaya Bank. We did get it soon. We walked in and talked to the manager(Mr.Nageswar Rao) and to our surprise there were already many people with the same needs. Being my first experience it only added to my pain. He gave us only 1 room in the nearest Matam. I didn't even bother to ask him for one more room and darshan tickets. Was on cloud nine to find a room finally. It was already 5pm by then. HR went back to catch up with the crew and bring them back to us with luggage. I crashed in the room for a while.The bangy guys had their own recommendation for atleast one room. We were damn sure of getting this. They came back with one more shock. Their reco was not of use to obtain a room. Even to obtain Darshan tickets, the slot we would get would be of next day's late evening and we couldn't afford to lose that much time coz we had many other places to visit.
We were left with no option but to get tight hold of my reco for a extra room and darshan tickets. I called back my uncle, told him about my situation, so he talked with bank manager and fixed a appointment for me at 8 pm. This time after getting refreshed I went again with HR, talked coolly with manager and explained him the situation. We had some casual talks also in between. He arranged us one more room by 9pm in the same matam. My friends then shifted to this new room and got some rest.
We had one more thing to do. Arrange Darshan tickets for 11 members for next day. After my request for room, I again had to request manager for Darshan tickets. I should say he was very decent, cordial for not kicking my ass as i was flooding him with want of more and more favors. He gave us two slips and asked us to write names of 5 ppl on one slip and 6 on the other. We left the bank then after being assured that we would hear from the manager on next day.
There were many things happening on a single day. We tried to put all those aside and went for a dinner nearby. When we came back, I had to hear this news that the manager had asked the bank's guard to pass some info to us. We were expecting a pleasant news from him about darshan tickets but it was shockingly pleasant. The guard met us at 11pm and asked only 5 of us to come for the darshan early morning at 5 am and said 2 more outsiders would join us in the morning. When we enquired abt the rest, he answered that they would have darshan in the afternoon.
We went back to room pondering on the selection of only 5 members from 11. The Hyd batch of 7 ppl had much places to visit and the 4 batch of bangy came only for darshan in Tirumala. So we thought it would be better if we take the lead in the morning. Now we had to choose 5 out of 7 Hyd guys. After some tough talks we reached to a unpleasant consensus that Praveen, santhosh would be the drop outs and the rest 5 would have the darshan. We still had many questions about the plan for the next day coz our group was splitting for darshan.
The twists in the plans we were facing reminded me of Prison Break and i pissed my friends by mentioning this at every twist. I was glad i had the role of Michael Scoffield :)
Day 2 (Dec 23' 07)
We woke up at 3.45 am and 5 of us got ready by 5 am. Went to the Bank's guard and We got the V.I.P tickets for 200 rs from the guard. We were waiting for the two outsiders who were expected to join us. The clock was ticking and it was 5.30 am and outsiders still didn't turn up. Added to this, we realized that our ticket's slot was valid till only 6 am. At 5.45 am the guard got a phone call from his superior that the outsiders won't join us and he asked two of our friends to replace them!!
All we had was 15 min. HR and Kiran rushed to the room and woke 2 of our hyd frens(Praveen and Santhosh), kicked them to get ready in 5 min!! They did and joined us by 6 am. I came to know that amidst of this hurry, Praveen accidentally hurted a aunty in a corridor by colliding head-on and poor aunty grieved in pain. Well we felt sorry for her but had no time to go back and take care of her. We ran like athletes and rushed to our darshan which was at 6 am by V.IP. entrance. It was not at all crowded at that hour in that entrance and within 15 min we were lucky to get 2 min darshan of Lord Balaji. (Generally you would get only few seconds of glimpse after having to wait for hours). We were in the temple premises till 8 am and reached back our room.
So the plan now was in order coz we 7 guys from hyd had finished our darshan. Now I had to arrange fo
r 4 more darshan tickets. To our horror we realized that it was sunday and banks would remain closed that day. We rang to the bank manager and he said one or the other person would turn up in the bank that day. To our surprise,(after our breakfast) bank manager himself turned up at bank at 10 am on sunday. I had to ask for one more favor of getting 4 more darshan tickets. "I can't assure you anything, We have to get permissions for the passes" was all he had to say. He asked us to come back at 11 am. I told that my friend (santhosh from bangalore) would turn up for the same and gave all specifics to my friend.We took Bhanu (one of the bangy guy) with us and went to visit 5 places.
1)SreeVaariPaadalu, where lord balaji first marked his foot steps on tirumala.2)Silaa Thoranam, with a natural huge rock and waterfalls near to it.
3) Sree Venugopla Swamy Temple, We had to save time and skipped to stand in queue and instead peeped the Lord from the outside.
4)Akasa Ganga, This is the place where we had fultu fun. Kiran was the only one who came with some arrangements like wearing a 3/4th, carrying mobiles and purse in a bag etc. Rest of us were carried away with the scenic waterfall and didn't think of anything. Got drenched fully including our mobiles :)
5)Paapa Vinaasanam, a place not much of interest after having a great fun at a place like Akasa Ganga.
On one hand when we were having fun, we were equally worried about darshan tickets of remaining 4 bangy guys. We kept them calling and we came to know that the bank manager asked them to come at regular intervals (11am,12am, 1pm , 2pm etc). We went back to join the bangy guys and at 2 pm i along with one of the bangy guy went to meet the manager with my shameless face ready to ask for one last favor of the day. He had only one same answer "plz wait while we get passes." So we did. (We didn't had any option too). I and Kiran crashed badly in the room and other guys(except bangy guys who were still yearning for darshan tickets) went to have their lunch. HR and Santhu were about to satisfy their appetite but they got one more urgent news. Bangy guys have got their tickets from bank manager and they were about to leave for darshan !! This was sho
cking for us because bangy guys left some luggage in our room and we had to check out our room after our lunch. HR and Santhu ran like Olympic athletes and asked the bangy guys to shift their luggage. They woke up me and Kiran from a very good sleep and asked us to come to lunch. Happily we went to do our lunch at 4pm.It was 5pm and we had to check out our room to visit Kaalahasti, a place renowned for Lord Shiva. We had one more string attached. The temple is more than 30 km away and it would be closed by 9 pm. Then came one more jolt. Prasad got a call from his home to reach cudapah and Kiran shankar had to go back to Hyd that evening. So now we were only a group of 5, we hired a ambassador and started to Kaalahasti by 6.30 pm.
The
journey on ghat road from Tirumala to Tirupati was a great experience i
n car. On the other side Kiran who left for Hyd had to travel in a bus and it was stomach twister ride for him:) We reached Kaalahasti at the nick of time and on a cursory look we didn't find any rush of devotees. So we skipped taking a special darshan ticket and proceeded. To our horror we realized that inside of the temple was flooded with devotees and we may not finish our darshan by 9 pm. A security guard nearby noticed our situation and helped us get away with the crowd and completed his formality later. I and HR felt a little bad for taking this short cut.We returned back to Tirupati and we needed to find a room. HR and praveen tried for around 10 hotels and added to our pain they all were already full. Finally after some wait we could manage a decent room for a day. I and praveen stayed back in the room while others had their dinner. Night ended peacefully and our burnt asses got some rest. We didn't really plan for the next day at that moment. It seemed like it didn't matter anymore.
Day 3 (Dec 24' 07)
I and HR decided that we would get more sleep than others, thanks to our previous day efforts. Everyone got ready, had our breakfast and chalked out the plan for the day after discussion with the cab drivers and our time constraints. We had to catch up the train to Hyd in the evening at around 6 pm. Finally we zeroed up
on three places for the day:1)Kaanipaakam, famous for Ganesha's temple. It seems Ganesha's statue keeps growing by an inch or so every year. This is around 45 km form Tirupati. Time was around 10.45 am and someone told us that darshan would stop for sometime at 11 am. So again we had to rush for a special darshan ticket to have a glance of Lord
Ganesha. It was really worth it. This time we went without any security guard escorting us. That made me and HR happy:). Lastly we got as many laddus ( Unlike in Tirumala where you are given only 2 laddus) as we want in this place, so we grabbed that chance for not having to disappoint our friends and family way back home.2) Chandragiri Fort, which was purely the cab driver's recommendation and later we realized why he said so. We were not allowed to trek to the fort but we got to see only a museum filled with antiques for which we paid little interest in the scorching sun.
3) Sreenivaasa Mangapuram, place which is just 10 km away from Tirupati. Belief goes that people who want to get married can visit this to fix their match soon. Couples also come for blessings after their marriage. Try your luck :)
4) GovindaRaju Aalayam, its a place in Tirupati itself
which we happened to see on our return journey. It was around 3.30 pm we reached the temple. Again this time we were deceived with the apparent crowd and got into the line of SarvaDarshanam which actually is a free darshan. All thanks to our Praveen san here. Once we got into the line he called us back but we realized that there was no going back in that line where people jostled for space. The time was ticking and it was 4.30 pm by the time we were out of the temple.We collected our belongings and went to a punjabi dhaba to satisfy our hunger. Now this place like many others in tirupati was packed to the fullest and he listened to our order only at around 5 pm. We had a dilemma about our t
rain timings, if it was at 6pm or later. We were getting late due to the bad service delay at the dhaba. It was around 5.30 pm by the time we could be done with our food and our friend Purushottam in the group had a nerve breaking tension thinking if we could make it to the train. Even I thought we could only catch it at just nick of the time. We rushed to the room and confirmed our timing in our ticket. We were relieved to find that it was at 6.30 pm. So we took our time to get ready and went back to the railway station nearby.
The train journey was cool with lots of jokes to crack on one another. Unlike our onward journey everyone crashed early at 10 pm in the train and by the time we woke up, we were in Hyderabad. (Kachiguda railway station).
That was the end of our 3 days trip but it was the beginning of many memories to live for years.
