Kalahasti and Tirupathi

This trip to Tirupathi was to shave of our little one's hair for the first time since he was born and offer it to the Lord. This is as per our tradition, that before we start to cut off the little one's hair, we need to shave it off completely for the first time within his age of one year. Else we would have to wait till he was three. At the rate G's hair was growing, and with the increasing heat, we didn't want to wait for three years! Hence the trip.

We hired an Innova (dual A/C) at a pretty decent rate of Rs. 8.50 per kilometer rate. Innova proved to be a comfortable choice to have been made for 6 of us including the little one. The distance from Whitefield to Tirupathi was estimated to be around 260 Km. Leaving home by around 10 am on Sunday, we took the Whitefield road, took a turn towards Hoskote and joined the Chennai - Kolar highway. We made good time and we reached Alamelumanga puram by 3 pm. The darshan and prasadam there took us about one hour.

From there, we left for Kalahasti, which was about 25 km from Alamelumanga puram. Kalahasti is famous for the Vayu Lingam temple. This beautiful temple has a Lingam which is surrounded by oil lamps. Interesting thing to observe here is that all of the oil lamps keep flickering due to the wind property of the lingam, except one, which is steady.

After this visit to Kalahasti, we returned to Tirupathi, stopped at Bhima's Residency for a refreshing cup of coffee and started on our trip to Tirumala. We had to first go through the security check posts before we started the climb. The ghat section was well lit up and the roadways for onward and return traffic was different. So it was a comfortable drive up to Tirumala. After having dinner and spending the night at the Ahobilam Mutt, we left at 6 am to the tonsuring center. The whole hair shaving procedure surprisingly went off smoothly, with the little one taking it pretty well! So back to the room for a bath, breakfast and then getting ready for the darshan. We reached the entrance by 8:30 am. They had a special queue, being Monday, for Mother's and kids less than a year old, and also for elderly people. Luckily we got into that queue which started moving by 9:45 am and we were out in half an hour's time after a wonderful darshan.

After some rest in the room, some pictures with G and his new look, we left back for Bangalore around 1 pm. The return journey had a lot of stops in between for snacks and walks for G to relax. Hence by the time we reached home sweet home, it was 8pm.