Tirupathi Ezhumalai Venkatesha

"Tirupathi Ezhumalai Venkatesha, enga aasaikellam pacha kodi kaattulesa..
Malai yeri vaarom ohohoho..."

February 1st 2006
It was first week of February. Most of the people in our project were busy with their works. This time we had an important process change to go as a part of requirement going into production for April Release. As it involved process change, some people were busy with their last minute impact analysis, some people were doing the unit testing for their code, some were fixing their code and some were busy with CM Synergy. For people who donot know what CM Synergy is, it is similar to CVS,PVCS,VSS, a version controlling software repository. I feel this is the most tiresome job that people hate to do in almost every organization. But people do understand that even though its tiresome to do, its worth doing it. I was checking in my fixes to CM Synergy when i got a call from my colleagues asking for if i am interested in a trip to Tirupathi the following week end. That sounded interesting to me and hence immediately agreed. I guess it was Wednesday. So almost 7 of my other colleagues agreed to it. So we decided to book a Toyota Qualis to Tirupathi. It was Ananth, who arranged for a Toyota qualis. Ananth and Vikram were instrumental in making this trip.

February 3rd 2006
Everything was set ready. We were informed by our friends that going on saturday and sunday is not advisable as its very difficult to get dharshan. But when we thought of booking tickets online or going to Tirumala Devasthanam at T.Nagar, it was very late. So we decided to take risk. It was communicated to every one who were part of this trip to come up with their baggages ready to office on Friday as we had asked driver to come to our office around 7.00 in the evening so that we can reach tirupathi around 11.30 provided we are not held up in the traffic. Except for the few, every one came up with their bags ready. As i was saying the work was slightly hectic that week, we could not make up to the time. But we started around 7.30 in the evening. Halted near guindy station to pick up few who agreed to take up the qualis there around 8.00. So when we were speaking to driver, we came to know that its difficult to get darshan. He said if we are ready to give extra amount towards the ticket, he would arrange for a darshan in the morning. We were not able to come up with any decision. We asked driver regarding the cottages at Tirumala. He informed us provided we reach the tirupathi before 12 in the night, only then cars will be permitted to go up. So we planned to take up a hotel at Tirupathi. We called up a hotel and enquired regarding rooms.

We were making fun out of others and we were constantly giving exercise to mouth(non stop talk) and it almost never stopped except for the last one hour of journey where people were almost dozing owing to the tiredness. We all had our dinner around 11.00 at Tiruttani on our way to tirupathi. It was 12.30 in the night when we reached tirupathi. We all bought Sudarshan Tickets by registering our finger prints at the counters which is the oldest of bimometrics techniques. Ticket was 3' 0 clock darshan in the evening. So we all headed towards hotel to take our night sleep there. It was around 1.30 in the night when every one went to their beds.



February 4th 2006
Everyone started getting up right from 7 in the morning and after every one having their morning showers checked out from the hotels and moved to a hotel to have our morning break fast. Every one had their break fast as per their choice. Poori, Masal Dosa, Curd Vada,Pongal Vada, Idli were worth mentioning. After having tea/coffee we started to move towards tirumala. Driver dropped us at the place from where people start walking...Wondering why did we got down there instead of going to Tirumala directly with cab? We decided to walk.. This was my debut. First when vikram initially told me that we are going to walk i turned out the offer, but later felt why not i make a try.So decided at last to walk.


So we all started to walk around 9.20 in the morning. First few kilometers, we could travel easily. Took some snaps on our way to Tirumala.

To see the snaps visit
http://krishmah.photosite.com



So slowly steps started becoming steep. I felt as if there was a daunting task ahead of me. Initially i felt i lack moral and physical strength to climb up the stairs to Tirumala. Here Vikram,Poomari and Mahesh deserves a special mention. They were the one to encourage me constantly and provide me confidence to climb up the stairs. It was their words that provided me Moral strength and Physical strength was given by the water,glucose and soda that i consumed. It was almost we covered 1250 steps, when i was informed that there are only 2050 steps. I was bit relaxed on hearing that. But only after reaching 2050 steps, i realized it was the first stage. Then we had to walk around 2-3 kms in road , then we joined back the steps again. The appearance of steps just brought down my moral confidence again back to zero and it took some time for Vikram and Poomari to bring back the Moral confidence to Normal Level. I kept on asking my colleagues , by chance is there any possibility to go back to road and take up a bus/cab to Tirumala. But still i cannot remember my eyes. I crossed 3600 Steps. It was 1.50 in the afternoon when we reached Tirumala. So it took around 4.30 hours to cover a journey of around 12 Kms. Had i not been there my colleagues would have completed that in 3 hours time.


It was almost time for darshan. It was decided to skip lunch even though one or two felt bad about it. People who were coming for the first time to Tirupathi were really surprised to see the queues. Almost around 4 in the evening we reached inside the vaikuntam complex. We had to wait for more than three hours inside the Vaikuntam complex. When we were inside the vaikuntam complex, we came to know that it was "Ratha Sapthami". So that was the reason for the delay.But that was not much paining as we had chairs to relax ourselves. It was finally 9.30 in the night when we came out of Garba Griha. Even though we get just less than 2 minutes to have a darshan of Lord Balaji, still its something special. So almost we waited for 7 1/2 hours to get a darshan of Balaji. We were lucky enough to see "Balaji" coming in Chariot.



When we came out, we collected the ladoos and every one was hungry and we all decided to eat our lunch cum dinner. Some were hesitating to have the dinner at Tirumala as we had to travel down by taking Hair pin bends. But later everyone was convinced to have food. We all had our full meals and then boarded the cab back. We could see the police at check post making his collections from the vehicles travelling through the check post.I guess his collection would come to more than 1000 in a day.When we were enquiring driver regarding this, we were being informed that this is quite usual at almost all the check post after 12 in the night.

February 5th 2006
I remember it was around 2.15 in the early morning when i was woken up by my colleague asking for the route to Nanganallur from Le Royal Meridien at Guindy. It was almost 2.30 when i reached home and bid adieu to my friends and went to bed by almost 3.00.I woke around 12 on sunday. Though i was completely tired after the trip to Tirupathi, it was a good experience.

Right throughout the trip, we all enjoyed. We had a good "Sight Seeing even" on our way to Tirumala.