Tirumala trip (Part I)

My wife had taken a vow to visit Tirumala after the wedding and that was the initial seed for planning this trip. I am not a devout person, and I don't really enjoy travelling to temples. So, it needed quite some convincing and some amount of coercion to make me ready for the trip. We decided to start for Tirupathi last Friday. Our plan was to go to Tirupathi by Friday evening and start to Tirumala on Saturday early morning. The reason for a break journey was, due to impending task of walking up to Tirumala ! As I was attempting to do this uphill task for the first time, we thought its better to take a break before.

We started our journey in an APSRTC Volvo bus, which was scheduled to start from Bangalore City Bus station at 12pm. We were boarding the bus at Binamangla station on Old Madras Road, as its very near to thippasandra, where we are put up. One more reason being, we try to avoid going to Majestic as much as possible, as its quite a local place and very shabby. After quite some waiting, we boarded the bus at almost 1 pm and we were really hungry. We thought the bus would stop somewhere for lunch soon, as it was already 1 pm. Everytime, we saw a dhabha on the way, we were hoping that the driver would stop there. Finally, the bus stopped at 2:30 pm. Even before we starting to get up from our seats, we realised that it was only a pissing stop. Really put off by this, I finally asked the driver if he is ever going to stop for lunch. He said, they are authorised to stop only at Nandhini restaurant and that will take another hour or so. We were really pissed off and tried to munch on some lays chips and chocolates to keep us away from getting a headache due to dipping sugar levels. At 4pm, we stopped for lunch at Nandhini restaurant and we didn't waste much time to finish our lunch. We arrived at Tirupathi around 5:30 pm, and went straight to Srivivasam, which is a TTD Office, having cottages just opposite to the Bus station. There were rooms of Rs.200 (non-ac), Rs.400(ac) and Rs.600(ac delux) range. I first thought of taking a 400 bugs room. But, to my surprise, they didn't accept credit card and I needed to pay by cash. A TTD office alloting rooms for thousands of tourists daily doesn't accept credit card was quite a revelation to me. I was not carrying much cash, so I decided to go with 200 bugs room instead. The room was pretty good for 200 bugs. It was tiled and was maintained quite well. I was quite happy with it and was all praises for such good maintainance. Srinivasam also has a Punnami restaurant (AP Tourism) inside this buiding itself. We had a light snack there for dinner, and it was quite good. Srinivasam also has huge open space in front of the building and with the cool breeze, we spent some good time there after dinner.

On Saturday morning, we woke up quite early and vacated the roomat around 6am. We then took an auto to Alipiri, the place where the steps to Tirumala begin. At Alipiri, there is a free luggage transportation office, where we can hand over the luggage to a TTD official and they will get it transported to Tirumala, typically in 5 hours time. They give a receipt with the time when the luggage is expected to reach Tirumala and is supposed to be quite reliable. We handed over our luggage to them here. And, I had the first glimpse of the other side of TTD officials here. The TTD official, who was taking the luggage was asking for a tip. I just ignored him and went away.

Our walk started off with the ritual of breaking a coconut at the first step. There were quite a lot of people walking up at that time, and some of them were really old. I was amazed by the way they were walking up. It looked like, just faith was driving them, even though their bodies were resisting. I was walking up pretty well and didn't find it much difficult untill an hour. We didn't have breakfast in the morning, and we were waiting to reach a point, where there is supposed to be a chain of dhabhas which serve very good snacks. After walking for an hour, slowly tiredness started creeping in, along with hunger. We picked up some chips and biscuits from the outlets on the walkway. There is an outlet for every 200-300 mt on the walkway. Thats pretty good, as we can atleast rely on buying food and water as we need, instead of carrying loads of them with us when walking up . We realised the importance of the outlets, after we walked for almost 2 hours, when, even a carry bag having an extra water bottle was making us feel like a huge load. So, we decided not to carry anything except a small water bottle. One bad thing about all these outlets is, they sell the items at 3-4 bugs extra cost than the MRP. So, if some people are very particular of not buying things for price above MRP, they better carry all the stuff need from tirupathi itself. After almost 3 hours of our walk, we reached the chain of dhabhas. We stopped at the first dhabha itself and had some delicious dosas there. Tirumala was supposed to be 2 hours more from here, and we continued our walk. The walk from here was a bit better, in the sense, each step was some 10 mts apart. People told us that it was not that much of a steep hill and so, its kind of less painful part of the journey. After an hour, we had to walk for some 2 km on the road. The walkway, even on the road is covered above. Infact, the complete walkway from the first step is covered quite well. After that walk on the road way, we arrived at mokalla parvatham (knees hill), which is the last hill to reach Tirumala. The name signifies the steepness of the hill. There is a saying that, anyone climbing up this hill will have to hold on to his knees as its so painful, due to extreme steepness. I tried to climb it fast, but was soon tired after climbing just 50 steps. It was really difficult to get through this part of the walkway, as I was already tired and was waiting to reach Tirumala. Finally, after some half an hour walk, we reached Tirumala ! Wow, that was quite a walk. We reached Tirumala at around 12:30 pm. It took us almost 5 hours to climb up.