Srisailam

Time: Oct 22-25, 2022

Place: Srisailam

Company: Wife, daughter, mother

Highlights:

I had this constant vision of Srisailam coming over and over since last several months - even more than a year, and hence had this wish to re-visit (previous visit was when I was maybe less than 10 years old, and the only thing that I remember was the sight of surrounding mountains in front of our lodge room). And since wifey likes mountain ranges (not climbing, just the viewing!), I thought this'd be a great place for a pilgrimage. I had done some research before (in 2021 itself) and found 2 to-and-fro suitable trains for this place and it'd leave on Saturday and back on Tuesday morning. So, that definitely needed a Monday holiday, and Tuesday too if possible. In Sept, we noticed that Paavani had Mon and Tue holidays for Diwali - what better day than this for Srisailam! Immediately saw train availability and booked it. There were two options, the ideal one had RAC - so had to book the confirmed availability but it meant we had to leave about 10 hrs early and stay overnight at Markapur. Anyways, so be it.

Day 0  - Oct 22nd : Just two weeks after we landed back in BLR from Himalayas, off we were again on one more trip! But thankfully, this was a short duration trip. Our train started from Yeswantpur at about post noon and it was an uneventful journey. Just relaxed, read book, ate some passing snacks (!), watched passing sights of the Eastern Ghats which stretched all along the Tirumala range. By the time we reached Markapur, it was close to 1 am. An auto took us to the hotel that we had booked for the night which was in the city, a good 15-20 minutes away. Thankfully, we were able to reach the hotel safely, and it was good and clean. We retired for the night, and had a good night's sleep.

Day 1 - Oct 23rd : We got up by 7, refreshed, had light snacks, checked out by 9 am, took an auto to the bus stand and thankfully, we got a bus that was just then departing to Srisailam. It was a pleasant drive for 1 hour amidst green pastures and then the climb started. I was expecting a huge ascent much like Tirumala but surprisingly, it was a gradual ascent with hardly any hair-pin bends. After more pleasant 2-3 hours drive, we reached Srisailam. Another auto took us to our hotel - Haritha hotel which is run by APTDC. A very good and reasonable hotel, in fact. Not something that we can book via booking.com or such websites, so have to book directly on APTDC website. 

Upon checking in, we had lunch at an adjoining restaurant. Then we took an auto to Pathalaganga. Then took the ropeway down to Krishna river. The scenery was beautiful, the river was clean and nice. We had a nice refreshing bath, it was not too cold since it was 4 pm. We thought of going to Akka Mahadevi cave but apparently we had to be present in the morning as tickets are given only for a short time duration only in the morning. Pathalaganga was done but there was a huge queue for the ropeway car back up. Came back up, took one more auto to our hotel, and thought we might as well visit the temple for one darshan since we still had lot of time. 

The temple was just a few steps away from the hotel. There was hardly any queue, so we got the darshan done very quickly. Spent time at the temple, including the Bhramarambha Devi Shakti peeth (right anklet of Sati fell here) and by the time we got out it was about 7 pm. Annadaanam was served at 7:30 pm, so we waited for some time, got prasadam meanwhile and then had our dinner. It was a simple two-course meal but unlimited. Post dinner, we walked back to our room and retired for the night.

Day 2 - Oct 24th : We had booked darshan for 9 am via online. So left room at about 7:30 am, waited inthe queue for about 30 minutes and then, like the previous day, the line moved fast enough and we had one more nice darshan of Mallikarjuna Swamy - one of the twelve Jyotirlingas. We had sufficient time now - so we explored the huge temple at leisure, including feeding hay and grass to the cows at Goshala, reading at the inscriptions on all the trees, paying obeisance to many idols in the temple premises, etc.. By the time we got out it was about 10 am and thankfully they were still providing the complimentary breakfast. 

We checked out soon after, got the bus to Markapur, reached at about 2 pm, but our train was only at 8:30 pm in the night. So we had a long wait of almost 6+ hours. I realized that I could have simply booked the KSRTC direct sleeper bus to BLR from Srisailam. It would have avoided all these multiple legs of the journey and interim wait times. Afraid of daughter's motion-sickness, I never even contemplated it! However, the long wait never seemed difficult. We kept busy with intermediate tea drinks, reading novels, making Paavani practice for her upcoming exams, general chit-chat, etc. Also got our dinner from a nearby residence-cum-restaurant, which had lot of demand since that was the only one in the vicinity. Soon the train came and rest of the journey was uneventful. We reached BLR next day 25th at about 9:30 am and home by 11 ish. 

And with that, the Srisailam trip got done. While I agree the itinerary could have been made very simple: BLR-SRISLM-BLR via KSRTC direct bus, we resorted to the more relaxing and comfortable train journey which involved more stops and hence wait times. But the trip, on the whole, upon recollection, felt very peaceful and soothing. The temple has super positive vibes, the place itself is consecrated and pure, and we felt blessed to have graced the sacred city. And then I saw this board in the railway station -

Note: We had planned for one more pilgrimage to Sonda in the next 2 weeks but due to my 'back' health reasons, we had to cancel that. Hence, this became the last pilgrimage of 2022! To say that it has been a lot of pilgrimages in 2022 is an understatement!