Tirupati

A trip to tirupati is always considered to be a milestone in a life of every hindu devotee and since i felt i should bethankful for all that God has bestowed me with, I promply booked my tickets and went over to Tirupati a week back courtesy Tirupati-Tirumala travels or should I thank APSRTC i am not sure about that. I suppose there is no need to thank anyone since i paid a lot of money but then on hind sight the journey was pretty smooth and hassle free which is to say a lot coz most of my sojourns have been quite a pain most of the time.
It was a friday and the bus was at seven at a place far away from my home so had to scamper back home and pack things up by 6 and reach the bus stop. The bus as is the wont of all its caste and creed turned up late and the time was well spent in looking at the empty race course nearby and wondering as to how it would be when in use. Any how when the bus did arrive, it was not surprising to find that the TV was chanting holy shlokas praising Lord Balaji to the skies for the entire duration of the journey. God has his own ways of making people listen to good things and in my case I was able to hear some shlokas ( without understanding them of course) over the radio city I was hooked onto using my cell phone. So much for wishing for a sound sleep. I did sleep off later only to woken up immediately at 3 am. We had reached a hotel or ashram or whatever u call it but it was a monolithlic hotel with lots of rooms and we were informed that we should take a bath and come back in an hour. we duly did that but then there are always some ppl who get a manic pleasure in being late for everything so we started late and reached the hill top at about 5 am. Even then it was not really shocking to find that almost 500 ppl were already standing before us and waiting for their chance. However we were able to do the darshan and stuff by 7:30 am. It was a bit of a let down that we were able to just get a sneek peek at the deity for whom we had come so far. The ppl who were monitoring devotee movements were pushing the devotees quite roughly that helped in making the system effective ( as there was little or no clogging) however i wouldnt give them much marks for maintaining aesthetics.
However it was a moving experiance to witness so many ppl having so much faith in that place and faith is what accords a place its religious importance and lends spiritual value.
Anyway we were back in the bus by 8 am and came back to the monolithlic whatever i mentioned before and had our breakfast. even at 8-9 am the weather was becoming humid and the heat reaching intolerable levels so I guess it must be requiring more that simply religious fanatism to go there late in the afternoon. We had to go to some other temple made in honour of Lord Balaji's consort. I skipped going to the temple and prayed from outside and went window shopping instead. Even as i was raring to get a sound sleep on the way back they started showing the movie 'dhoom' at such high decibels that the options of doing anything other than watching the movie were next to nill. however the movie was worth watching more than once and so the time seemed well spent. Needless to mention that the coach was an AC coach and hence it was much easier to relax inside.We reached back at 4pm and thankfully without sun burns.:)
This was one trip I was waiting for quite some time and I think I was lucky to go there. I didnt find any particular reason why this temple was so different from myriads of other temples we see all over the country but then its all a matter of faith.