The religious would call this last minute trip to the Tirupati Venkateshwara Temple materialising out of nowhere just before I was to undertake the mega trip of my life nothing short of divine intervention; and this is how I justified going on it instead of attending to the other things I needed to take care of.

So Prit and I booked ourselves on a 24 hour package tour that would take us from Bangalore on the evening of 18th January and bring us back to Bangalore on the evening of the 19th.

Prit & I chilling on the last seat of the bus

The tour bus and the overall service was less than satisfactory, but the darshan (auspicious sighting of the deity) itself was Something Else. Those who know me know that there isn’t a single religious bone in me, but that was by far the closest “religious experience” I have had so far. When our position in the horrendously long queue finally reached the sanctum sanctorum, and I was face-to-face with the black stone idol that is constantly bombarded with prayers from millions of people around the planet day-in and day-out, I simply couldn’t take my eyes off. It was like time had come to a stop. My body was being pushed ahead, but my mind was absolutely still in another time and place where there was just me and that black rock. I guess I had less than 10 seconds to see the idol at the end of the more than 4 hour wait in the queue, but it seemed strangely sufficient and even more strangely totally worth it. Was it the super-long wait in the queue, or the super-short sighting time, or a combination of both that made the whole experience so special I can never tell. I don’t know if I’ll go to the temple and stand in line again, and if I do, I don’t know if I’ll have the same electrifying experience again, but I’m glad I did at least that one time.

Close-up of the black stone idol  

Aerial view of the temple complex  

The huge Tirupati laddoos with the copyrighted recipe