Srisailam trip

A couple of months back a few of my uncles and aunts planned a trip to Srisailam during the Christmas break. My parents also decided to join and tickets were booked well in advance for the whole group. In early December, there was a back out - and that is how I came to be invited to tag along.

We (wife, kid and self) boarded Sabari from Trivandrum on the 24^th. Wife and kid got off the train at Ernakulam. At Aluva the rest of the group boarded. Besides my parents, aunts and uncles, the group also included my uncle’s colleague, a Professor hailing from Nellore. He turned out to be (literally) our friend, philosopher and guide for the whole trip.

It was an interesting train journey. More than half the compartment was occupied by Ayyapa devotees – those returning from the Sabarimala pilgrimage. Around 7:30 PM I overheard bells ringing nearby and went over to investigate. Well, around 7 or 8 bare footed, bare chested devotees were hunched around a stand. There was a photo of Lord Ayyapa in the centre and the ‘periya swami’ was performing an arti (he was burning real camphor). The coupe had been converted to a makeshift temple. Feeling rather pious, I turned around to return to my seat when I happened to notice the chap on the side berth adjacent to the make shift temple. He was immersed in a Malayalam film magazine (Nana) drooling over a bikini clad picture of a starlet. The contrast could not be more striking!

Since our stop (Ongole) was at 4:30 in the morning, we had an early dinner and retired early. My father got a wake up call at 12:30 AM at Tirupathi ! A traveller had boarded the train with the previous day’s ticket (the confusion was because the train reached his boarding station, Tirupathi on start date + 1). A couple of hours of heated discussions later, the crestfallen traveller had to pay a heavy fine. The TTR was obviously a happy man having extracted the amount from the hapless chap.

From Ongole we proceeded by car to Srisailam via Podile, Markapur and Dornala . The ‘Prof’ informed us that it would take us around 4-5 hours to get there - three fourths of the distance to be covered in the plains followed by around 50 Kms of ghat roads. The fearless Innova driver got us to Markapur in double quick time. The roads were not exactly wide or in good condition. That did not seem to deter him. He also did not seem the least bit intimidated by trucks or APSTRC buses and always seemed to veer off from head on collisions at the last minute. All of us were praying to Lord Siva even before getting to Srisailam.

The stretch around Markapur is granite country. One interesting innovation we noticed was that thin granite slabs (waste from quarries) were used to build walls. The trick seemed to be to tightly wedge the thin slabs together.

Markapur, a sleepy little town was just waking up as we arrived. It did not seem to have a decent, clean restaurant. We picked the one that looked the better of the lot and quickly dug into breakfast on offer.

The roads got worse as we moved further into the heart of Andhra. But the terrain started giving way from dusty and rocky grey to various shades of green with yellow sprinkled in for good measure. For a while it was sunflower country…..

Then it became red hot …..

We also saw miles of tobacco crop and thuvara parippu crop.

Our Prof informed us that while the main crop in the coastal districts was paddy, this area was good for cultivating crops like tobacco, chilli, sunflower, thuvara dal, kadigu etc.

And soon the ghat section started…

After a couple of hours of scenic journey, we finally made it to Srisailam. The climate there was quite pleasant. We checked into ‘Ganga Sadan’ which is one of the Devasthanam (equivalent of Kerala’s Devason board) built accommodations. The rooms were spartan but spacious and clean. Unlike Guruvayur, the rates were reasonable and facilities plenty.

They had even provided access to clean drinking water (1 rupee per liter). The purifier seemed impressive (quartz filter-carbon filter-reverse osmosis-active carbon filter-UV standardization etc!!)

Before we go any further a bit of background history/mythology on Srisailam -

The holy town of Srisailam is located on the banks of the Krishna river in the heart of the Nallamalla hills in Kurnool district. The Bhramaramba Mallikarjunaswamy Temple dedicated to Lord Mallikarjuna Swamy (Shiva) and Devi Bhramaramba (Parvathi) is located here. This is one of the 12 Jyotirlinga temples dedicated to Lord Shiva. A Jyotirlinga is a shrine where Lord Shiva is worshipped in the form of a "Lingam of light”. Amongst the Jyothirlinga tempes, after Somnath, Srisilam holds the most significance.

The story behind Bhramaramba Devi is also interesting.

A demon named Arunaasura performed Tapasya for a very long time and pleased Lord Brahma. Arunaasura asked for a boon that he should not be kílled by a two footed or a four footed creature. Lord Brahma granted his wish. Soon Arunaasura started terrorizing the three worlds. In response to prayers from the Gods, the goddess created thousands of bees (which are six legged creatures) and herself turned into one. The bees got rid of Arunaasura and his whole army in no time.

And now back to the blog. We quickly had a hot water shower and proceeded to the temple. Since the ‘free’ queue was quite long, we took the Rs 100 darshan ticket and proceeded to wait. It took us about an hour to get to the sanctum sanctorum. In-spite of the wait, we only got a brief darshan.

By now all of us were hungry and thirsty. Went to a makeshift restaurant nearby and had spicy Andhra meals.

Post lunch it was time to visit the Pathalaganga which is a deep gorge near the Srisailam Dam. To get there, earlier one had to walk down the hill to the reservoir valley. Now there is a ropeway which starts just one KM away from the temple.

View of the dam from the ropeway

Professor explaining the significance of Patalaganga to the rest of the group

From here, one can visit the Akkamahadevi Caves where the famous ascetic Akkamahadevi performed penance. However as it was getting late and as we had to visit a couple of more places, we decided to skip the one hour boat ride to the caves.

Once we were back up where our car was waiting, we decided to visit the Shivaji Spurti Kendra created to commemorate Shivaji’s visit to Srisailam. We stopped a monk to ask for the way and he guided us in exchange for a lift.

Imposing statue of Emperor Shivaji.

Next we visited the Chenchu tribal museum situated at the entrance of Srisailam town. But first we took snaps of the large statues at the main round about.

The museum itself was disappointing. Though the exhibits were well kept, there was no description. Interestingly the exhibits were numbered meticulously but as I mentioned before without write-ups the numbers were of no use.

I felt that Nandu (my daughter) might have had a good time in the garden if she had been there. For some weird reason, there were swings, a large play area and even a dinosaur. Maybe the intention was to have a museum (for the adults) and a garden (for the kids).

By now most of the members in the group were tired and we headed back to Ganga Sadan for a short late afternoon siesta. In the evening, after a warm shower and steaming hot coffee, we decided to try for one more round of darshan. As we neared the temple entrance we realized it was going to be next to impossible. This being a long weekend, the rush was increasing by the hour. We had to be satisfied with darshan from outside.

As it was getting colder by the minute, we had dinner on our way back to Ganga Sadan and retired for the night.

Woke up to a foggy morning (which meant a late 8:30 AM start). This gave enough time to the driver to get someone to try out some colorful art work on the car.

The first stop of the day was the Sakshi Ganapathy temple located 3 KMs away from Srisailam. Lord Ganapathy here keeps a record of all the pilgrims to tender evidence of their visit. The idol holds a book in the left hand and a pen in his right. The devotees are supposed to visit this temple on their return from Srisailam and inform Ganapathy of their name and ‘Gotra’. For a small fee, we got the pujari to chant our name and Gotra so that Ganapathy could log our visit!

From here we proceeded to Hatakeswaram. As per the local folklore, Siva appeared to a potter devotee over here. Within the peaceful temple premises, there is a small temple of Lalitha Devi as well. Under the watchful eyes of the resident monkeys, we offered our prayers.

From Hatakeswaram, we proceeded to the small but beautiful subterranean streams – Panchadhara and Phaladhara. Legend has it that the Phaladhara originates from the forehead of Lord Shiva. Panchadhara signifies the five aspects of Shiva. We were informed by the Prof that the water from these streams flow uninterrupted through out the year.

The last stop just before we returned from the Srisailam area was the highest peak in the surrounding area – Shikaram. As per the Skanda puranam, whoever can successfully see the Shikhrama (you have to peep through the ears of the Nandi statue) of Mallikarjuna temple from Shikaram is free from rebirth. Eager to attain Moksha, all of us tried our luck (Rs. 2 for an attempt) but alas it was not yet time!!

Interestingly at the heights of Shikaram, one can also see the height of commercialization. Since viewing the central gopuram (with the naked eye) through the ears of the Nandi is extremely difficult, help was at hand nearby – for a price of course. Just before we approached the Nandi statue, there was this resourceful chap with a pair of binoculars at a vantage point. For Rs 10, he was helping the pilgrims focus on where to look at!! With modern day technology one can cheat even the Gods!

With that we descended from the hills and by 1 PM we reached Markapur. Our intention was to visit the Sri Lakshmi Chenna Kesava Swamy (Vishnu) temple but we were late by half an hour. We had to be content with visiting the outer precints of the temple.

We had lunch at the same restaurant we had stopped enroute the day before. There for the first time during this trip I managed to get hold of my favorite daal powder. Whilst I loved the food, the others found it a bit too spicy. Even the beet root thoran was hot!

By evening we reached Ongole station.We had nearly 4 hours till the train would arrive at Ongole. We spent the time resting, walking from one end of the platform to the other and generally ruminating over the events of the past two days.

We boarded the train at night, tired but satisfied. All of us slept very well unlike the onward train journey. Thus ended our short but sweet trip to Srisailam.

Shiva Shambo!