Tirupati, the temple that is made around a deity thats believed to be Lord Vishnu in his own form. This means that Lord Vishnu Himself froze as an idol in Tirupati. There is also a popular belief that when one says that s/he'll visit the temple, s/he must do so. Well, I follow it too!
So Saturday that went, a friend's family and I drove to Tirupati. I was really looking forward to it for many a reasons: its a great darshan, driving is fun and of course, its with Sandeep, his wife, Vidisha and their son, sweet li'l Arjun. Its surely becoming a good mix of trips to Tirupati.
The first time I went was with Anya. It was quite a sudden decision and we didn't get any arranged-tour tickets, so we took some local bus. Hotel was difficult to find there and we ended up spending a lot of money! Moreover, all this because we got a queue time 18+ hours later. But the darshan was great.
The second time was by ITDC's Volvo tour, this time with Anya, Rags and Harish. The driver drove like crazy and reached us in a mere four odd hours! The Volvo made us feel as if we were floating in the air. It was around one o'clock and we were to ready ourselves in an hour's time before leaving for darshan. With some issues, we still made it to a great early morning darshan.
Until this Saturday, I hadn't realized that the roads are so good. We left quite later than initially planned. That caused us some traffic trouble, but more than that was the rather hot weather. In either case, we cruised the Zen at 120kmph smooth, at times. The trouble was missing the Chittoor bypass, clocking more kms and adding time to our already delayed schedule. We couldn't get an early morning darshan, but did get it around noon. Its commonplace that the hardships in the journey and over-crowded queues feel nothing past the darshan.
After the darshan, as expected (by us), we'd a difficult time to trace back our car parking area. We managed only to leave after a late lunch at around 1530 hrs. The drive down the Tirumala hill was fun at a rather slow speed. I wanted to speed away once we got down to Tirupati so as to cover as much a distance before night showed up. So I did, with our usual tea breaks. This time, we kept an eye open for not bypassing the Chittoor bypass. Although that road pulled down speeding, it was quite an empty stretch with good sideview. Nearing the city, traffic caused more delays reaching us only past 2100 hrs! Having driven Sandeep's Zen so, I wonder how my Wagon-R will be on those roads. In any case, worth a drive.
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