Balaji Darshan and Echoor trip

The initial pace at which the kuldev trips began definitely slowed down as the year progressed, the main reason being the unavailability of one or the other due to personal commitments.

But still it is in each and everyone's heart to complete this wonderful journey!

By September, we had covered Kalyan, Karthik, Jagan with a trip to Tirupati in between.

Tirupati was a memorable trip with the kids also joining us.

The trip happened in July with two own cars and an Innova from Ravi Travels exclusively for the ladies. Kids Adhi, Amrita and Pavitra were care of Satish uncle. Ranga, Karthik, Kalyan and Jagan were in the third car.

First stop was breakfast followed by photo session.

We then proceeded to Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal temple in Appalayagunta where Venkatesa Perumal and Goddess Padmavathi are said to have stayed for a few days after their wedding.

guys in share auto as ravi travels car wasnt allowed

The temple was quite crowded as it was already Aadi maasam for Telugu people, though it was still Aani for us.

A lady was performing musical harikatha with fervour.

Being quite an old temple of medium size, it had main sannidhi of Perumal and also separate sannidhis for Goddess Padmavathi, Andal and Anjaneyar.

Our next visit was to Thiruchaanoor Padmavathi Thaayar temple. Thaayar was resplendent in her alangaram and ready to bless all the devotees benevolently as always.

Lunch at Bhimas was a noisy affair with 13 people ordering different stuff. 

Post lunch Kalyan and Adhi were supposed to climb the hill by foot when Ranga suddenly decided to join them. 

Rest of the crowd went up by car to relax in the room.

Our darshan slot was booked for next day morning by 11am and hence the whole of the evening was at our disposal. It has been eons since I roamed around the grounds of Tirupati temple and enjoyed it especially in the company of our lot! We decided to go one full round visiting the Varahaswamy temple and Hayagreevar temple on the way with many a photo session in between. It was enjoyable with the weather being very pleasant!

With dinner at Annamaya and we called it a day!

Morning began with breakfast at Annamaya followed by joining the queue for darshan. As we started early, there was not much crowd and we could run through the counters but they made us wait in one slot for more than an hour. We started reciting Vishnu Sahasranamam followed by Srinivasa Govinda namavali printed by Jayaraman mama (Kalyan's father).

A Telugu devotee in the queue followed and started singing songs and this namavali with so much of passion that made the waiting period very pleasant and a devotional one!

Close to the sanctum it was push and pull as usual, with our lot getting separated into 2-3 groups, but the darshan was Ultimate as always.

Meeting place was outside the sanctum followed by quick darshan of Vagulamala and offerings in undial and collection of laddu prasadam.

Once Darshan was completed it was time to get down the hill, have lunch and get back home! But all of us wanted to repeat this experience again! Hope it happens!

To continue with Kuldev trips, the group took a sudden decision on 21 September by 12 noon to visit Satish's kuladeivam Kali Amman in Echoor.

As it involved a duration of only 4-5 hours, we could take a quick decision and execute this trip with visits to two more temples nearby. That Ranga and I had to leave his cousin who had visited on that day at a loose end is another story, but we did not want to miss a Kuldev trip for any reason.

Ravi Travels tempo traveller picked us up from home instead of the usual meeting point at Ramaniyam as a special case. As we crossed Porur it rained heavily for 15 minutes and we thought our trip was going to be affected. But the ever-merciful Goddess, made the trip successful!

First was visit to Sreedevi Kaliamman temple in Echoor. I believe the temple was in a bad shape before Satish's family and a few other families made an effort to restore its structure as it stands today. 

 

 Our own "Kamala" also had a hand in directing Jayashree to their Kuladeivam! By the time we got down from the tempo traveller, dusk was falling and the first thing we saw was the kutti temple chariot! It was made of wood and had intricate work on it, We entered the temple to see a kutty Goddess beautifully decked! 
Like the saying, மூர்த்தி சிறியதானாலும், கீர்த்தி பெரியது, the Goddess is all powerful and kaaval deivam for Echoor. Jayashree had brought many offerings to the Goddess and after archanai and deeparathanai, we came out to go around the temple. Satish described how their family - close as well as extended, had taken part in the temple restoration.

We crossed the renovated temple pond, to go to Maragathavalli sametha Markandeswarar Temple. 

According to the Gurukkal, the temples were probably a at least 700 years old, though he was not sure about it. We went about the outer prakaram first, taking a look at the colourful pink arali, yellow flowers and white nandiyavattai plants around the prakaram. The Vinayagar in goshtam had a very cute thoppai that Suja wanted to cuddle Him!

The other goshta moorthies where Mahavishnu, Brahma, Durgai and Chandikeswarar. There was a Sakthi Ganapathy and a Sastha also in the prakaram. Of course, like all Sivan temples there were the Navagrahas and Kalabhairavar. Completing the round, we entered the sannidhi to pray to the Lord and the Goddess. The main sannidhi had a big Lingam and huge avudai, but the Goddess stole our hearts with her majestic appearance. With our very minimal knowledge, we could make out that the idol of the Goddess must be ancient, most probably older than the 700 years as informed by the Gurukkal. He also showed us an inscription on the wall written in an ancient version of Telugu which even those native to the language couldn’t comprehend what was written there. 
The only thing they could make out was that the Kanchi Mutt head before our Periyava—Sri Mahadevandra Saraswathi VI—had visited the temple in 1907. The Gurukkal also said that legend says that Echadattar (father of Chandikeswarar, who is one of the 63 Nayanmars) was given darshan here by the Lord on the tamizh month of Chitirai, Sadaya Nakshatram. Hence the town is Echoor

Loaded with such interesting information, we proceeded to the Adhi Kesava Perumal temple. This temple is fairly new and had main sannidhi of Sreedevi Bhoodevi samedha Adhi Kesava Perumal. The road leading to the temple was decorated with lights and a large quantity of sundal for neiveidyam was getting ready. Swami oorvalam was to take place followed by the distribution of prasadam as it happened to be the 1st Saturday of the tamizh month of Purattasi.

Taking tulasi theertham, shadari and stealing a click of the urchavar ready for procession, we went to the bhajanai mutt down the road. This was a small place with a huge picture of Hanuman outside and Lord Rama with Seetha and Lakshmana inside the room. The Perumal temple Bhattar's son, a very cute little boy, enthusiastically showed deeparathanai and did Shadari for us. His mother was kind enough to offer us their house for our nature call. When we freshened up, they offered us chakara pongal which was amirtham at that point as all of us were hungry! As it was getting later we decided to have dinner on the way back successfully completing yet another Kuldev trip.