After a period of 7 years I am revisiting Tirupati but this time also I don’t have a darsan ticket. I took an evening train from Palakkad along with my colleague to reach Tirupati at around 03.30 am which got delayed by around 1 hr. So my plan was to get in to a queue at Alipri Bus stand for darsan ticket but train delay got me in a fix. We took around 30 minutes to get ready from a small dormitory around and then took an auto to Srivari Metu which is 20+ kms from Tirupati. Since the Srivari Metu entrance is inside the forest, it will open only by 06.00 am. Lot of vehicles were there when we got there and without waiting we rushed to the queue which was a dense one and somehow we rushed to make it to the end of the queue and got our eyes scanned and tickets issued for the same day by 04.00 pm. Even though many people returned after obtaining the tickets we climbed the 2600 steps which is believed to be the path taken by Lord Balaji. The climbing was but difficult with intermittent halts as it was steep and needed time. We climbed to the top in around 1.5 hrs and After reaching Tirumala, I had my head shave done and later we had breakfast and then went on a trip to several places around Tirumala in a small truck which was a pleasant journey. We had lunch at Temple Annasalai which was a three storey building and I guess more than 3000 can have lunch at a time and lunch was such a delicious one that one visiting there should never take an alternative as quality is assured and it was served in a leaf plate. We joined the queue by 03.30 pm and had darsan of swamy by 05.30 pm. We purchased some more ladoos for family and went to Padmavati Ammavari temple the next day morning and later got into IRCTC lounge at Renigunta for 6 hrs and later boarded a train at 12.00 pm which dropped us at Coimbatore by 07.00 am. We took a bus to Palakkad from there and it t was a beautiful journey altogether.
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