Trip to Tirupati Balaji

One fine day I went to office and after one hour one of my colleague came to my desk and offered my some prasad, on asking he told that this prasadam is from Lord Tirupati Bala ji. I have heard a lot about Lord Bala ji but never got a chance to visit his holy place and when I enquired about how to visit that holy place the way my friend told, it sounded very interesting and I also decided to visit that place.

There are many ways to visit Lord Bala ji holy place but the best way is to book a a/c volvo bus which runs daily from Bangalore and its like a package, they will take care of everything including darshan also. So same way I have also opted and booked a package tour ticket one week before which costed me around 950/- per head. I choose the date of travel in the mid of week as the crowd will be less during that period.

Per the schedule I reached at the pick up point of the bus and boarded into the bus. Normally these buses start at around 9:30 pm daily and around 1 am early morning these buses reaches at Tirupati. And same happened to me as well. I reached 1:15 am at Tirupati and our coach guided us the way to the ticket counter. Once you reach Tirupati there are 6 ticket counters and there ticket varies from free to rupees 50/-. Before issuing you a ticket they take your photo and thumb impression. I along with other bus passengers went to the ticket counter and took rupees 50/- ticket and the time I got of darshan was 1 pm in the afternoon. Basically there are various times of darshan and for more information, we do couple of websites even.

Once we all got the tickets so the bus guy took us to a hotel where he gave us half hour to get ready and per the schedule we all were ready and boarded back into the bus. Then the bus guy, per the package took us to a Lord Shiva temple which is 20 kms away from Tirupati. As soon as we reached temple, we heard the sound of bhajans which were very touching and soothing to body and soul. We visited the temple, and after that our guide took us again back to hotel where we had our breakfast.

Once we were done with that he told us to get ready and board back into the bus as we will be going to Padmavati temple (In north we call them as Lakshmi), as soon as we reached Padmavati temple, lot to people came to us, they were selling flowers specially Lotus flower which makes Padmavati happy. All of us took the flowers and went inside the temple. The structure of the temple is one of the unique structure I have ever seen, it was like merry go round. We visited that temple and after that the bus guide told us that we are now going to head towards Tirupati’s temple.

Bus took us to a bus stop and in front of that bus stop there was a nice hotel and guide took us in where the lunch preparations were already done, we all had our lunch and then a guide came and told us that private buses are not allowed at Tirumla (This is the name of the place where actually the temple is), so we have to go in the state bus and they have already made the necessary arrangement. We boarded in the state bus and in next 45 min. we were at Tirumla. Tirumla is on the hill and full place is so peace and clam, it like some vibrations are passing by. There were small rooms where visitors stay and you can get those in rupees 50/- per day if you want to stay for a day or two. We stepped out from the bus and guide took us to a place where we submitted our violets, shoes, mobiles, cameras (all these are not allowed because of security reasons). After submitting he guided us to the way from where we can go. We just overlooked and in weekdays also we say a queue which is almost 4 kms long, anyway we got in the queue. There were 2 types of queues – one where those who purchased 50/- rupees ticket can go and other for those who have free tickets. Both the queue length was almost the same and it took almost 3 hours to reach inside the temple, once we reached inside the temple our eyes were wide open, the whole inside temple is full of gold. I have never seen so much gold in my life time and infact you can touch it and feel it. Again inside the temple also there was a small room where the statue of Lord Tirupati was kept, fully covered with gems, diamonds, and gold. One can not take his/her eye from that statue. And security don’t allow us to stand there, we have to keep moving so that’s what we did and after seeing that from the other side of the temple we came out. Everything is very well planned and somebody was saying daily almost 1 lac people visit…amazing. Once we came out, there is place where you can go and have your food but the guide told us to come fast so we all decided to skip the food.

Based on your ticket there is a counter from where you can get prasadam (in other words ladoo), per ticket 2 ladoos are allowed. The security there guided us the way from where we can get the prasadam and after getting the prasadam we came back to the place where we submitted all our belonging and after taking our belonging we boarded back into the state bus and that bus dropped us to the place somewhere in between and our earlier

bus was waiting there. We boarded in our bus and he took us to a place where we can have our snacks. The place was not so good but after walking so much every food was good, we had that and boarded back for pavilion. At around 9:30 we were in Bangalore and by 10:15 I was at home and feeling happy that I visited that holy place and more excited that tomorrow I will take the prasadam to my office saying that I came from Tirupati Balaji’s place.