Trip To Tirupathi.
It feels strange to write a letter about a trip, we used to be asked to write a mail about a trip to the zoo by my English teacher in class 2 when I was being taught letter writing.
The Attendees:
- Me, myself who else?
- Mr Darshan P.K ( a colleague from TKM ,never expected him to join the trip until he borrowed My DVD)
- Prasad (works along with me in TKM, a friend from college days..)
- Naveen ( yup friends group again.. the busy man from J.K consultancy)
- Mr. Deepender Singh alias DEEPU ( friend from coll , also has his own laughter club.)
- Mr. Rohit-Nick name BABA (friend from coll have traveled a lot with him these days and can say its been a pleasure having his company.)
The plot:
We selected The 9th and the 10th of july..Giving us a cushion on the 11th . It was raining cats and dogs on the 9th of July. Besides we had booked a normal KSRTC bus due to non availability of any hi tech or Volvo buses, besides nobody wanted to spend much here and save to put in the hundi in tirupathi..
Scene 1: Arrival
Arrive in the bus stand (9.25 pm) to see Naveen instantly, we think the bus is of 10.10 pm and tell the conductor that our friends are yet to come.. the next half an hour goes searching in vain for the others.. 9.45 pm I move away from the bus and go to a nearby stand to find the remaining 4 people happily chatting away, I am like “people the bus is already there in the stand”
We go & sit in the 10.10 bus only to find that ours is the 10.05 bus the bus next to the bus we are..
We now go to our original bus. Where our real roots belong. Normal bus that is worse than a pushpak.
Scene 2 : Travel
Everybody In their seats trying to make themselves comfortable..
Darshan dressed swanky in a Japanese print t-shirt & shorts, pulls out a CD Walkman player from his bag, totally hip in a normal public bus. Made me wonder whether he should have been in the Volvo a/c bus instead.
Rohit in his usual self , keeping all that he eats for the journey with him..
Naveen was dressed to act in DDLJ part 2.. just missed out on the guitar though.
Nothing swanky about others including me though..
The next 2 hours was like munna bhai meets Dawood ibrahim.. lol.. Darshan was getting acclimatized to Rohit ’s and Deepu’s heroics in the past.
It was raining heavily outside and the driver was driving like crazy ,all we could do was make sure we had insurance or it was too late.
We also made Rohit climb into another bus in the break that is given , very hilarious moment ..goes into another similar bus & asks a lady if she is sitting in his place then looks out to see us laughing holding our stomach n gets down giving us 1000 gali’s per minute.
Somehow after getting absolutely no sleep (only Naveen and Darshan could manage some sleep in that bus) we arrived at tirupathi at 3.15 am..
Scene 3: The queue begins.
There is a decent amount of queue in front of the railway station where the bands to the Darshan timings (a.k.a appointment with God) is given. Even there, there is some thug who tells u that he will shorten the queue 4 u if he is given 20 bugs. But we decide to stand in the queue wanting 9 tickets for 6 of us , but the ticket issuer counts each and every one of us and asks “why 9?? I am giving only 6”.
The time given is 10 pm on Saturday night. So we have the whole day to sleep n relax.
Scene 4 : Baba’s Day out.
We go to a lodge (5.00 am) guided by Baba & Deepu, they stayed there in their previous visit. 6 of us in one room on the 2nd floor of a shabby lodge where 2 beds are allocated for us to sleep. Each one started to take his individual bath (thankfully) by 6 o clock everyone was playing with the remote of a black & white T.V in awful condition. Although the F tv models still looked splendid in it…!!
We went out for breakfast by 9 pm to an air-conditioned hotel on railway platform, the food wasn’t that good though.
We asked the waiter about movies in town and he said the movies have already started at 8.am!! the next show was at 11.45 am.
We went back to our rooms and rested till 11 am with some chips n stuff.
Scene 5 : Movie hall -ARYA
We leave our rooms at 11.15 and reach there at 11.25 only to know that the movie has already started at 11 .15. I was going for a Telugu movie for the first time in my life unlike the others with me who have watched many; I thought it was a small town so I was very casually dressed in my Bermudas n t-shirt. We step in to the theatre hall to find that its one of the best available in town and with all facilities, people who are well dressed are staring at me as if I was a foreigner.
We settle down in our seats and ARYA (name of the movie) seemed to be running successfully for 50 days. It was about this hero having a one sided affair with the heroine. The story was quite different although very predictable.
I tell Baba to start enjoying the movie and we start applauding and whistling to the dance sequence and songs. People again looking at us, now as if it was our place and they were Visitors to town!!
Scene 6 : The climb.
After the entertainment we go on to have our lunch and book the early morning tickets of 6 am Sunday at the bus stand.
We then return to our rooms. Deepu & Baba don’t want to climb the hills but go by bus. The remaining four of us coax them into climbing it saying that it would be fun and memorable.
We leave our rooms at 4.20 pm … we climb an auto from our lodge to the foothills..6 persons in an auto, Unbelievable in Bangalore but true in tirupathi.
We just say a small prayer before we start.(everybody knows 15 kilometers and 4000 steps is not easy) we start off well . By 1000 steps every body is drenched in sweat , the shirts are off , the footwear is in the hands and everybody is looking forwards for a drop of water to drink.
Here is where Baba who was struggling gets some divine help and starts to lead us all from the front. Naveen meets some of his seniors from school. Naveen & I go ahead while others relax with lemon soda. We go on to have some sprite and cucumber to get some water back into our system.
We finally make it to the road after 1 and half hours of walking and climbing through 11 kilometers. Here there are some wild animals and a huge statue of Lord Hanumantha and we haven’t got a camera with us .
So we march on to the final frontier of our climb. The Steep final 300 steps.
We make it quite easily , me deriving some inspiration from Baba climb with much more dedication and speed to make it up there first , followed by Baba himself.
Scene 6 : Thirumala –The appointment with God.
We have our dinner at hotel woodlands, watching cute college going girls( well that’s kind of cheap but well it was them who was staring at us) .
We drop our footwear at one end on the temple to stand in the ever so long queue.
We have ultimate fun here.
We stand in the queue for 4 hours approximately only disturbed twice.
- When Deepu’s mobile & Naveen’s FM Radio was confiscated and kept in a safety locker.
- When I & Naveen are banned from entering the Darshan in our Bermuda’s unless we wear a PANCHE lol. We buy one when others are waiting for us in the queue.
Total delay 1 hour.
Baba in his usual form continues all the jokes and mimics and Darshan finds out why it is dangerous to be with Baba when the person next to him in queue stares at him as if he were to hit him.
Then we have a good Darshan of the lord himself after all the troubles we had.
We rush to the laddoo counter and take our laddoo’s . We are out of the temple at 1 am.
We again take a long walk to get back our footwear. We look for a bus to go back to our room only to be told that the next bus is at 3 am.
We sleep on the footpaths and bus stand seats till 3 am.
The Rest as they say IS HISTORY.
