Travelling

Day 6 Puducherry - Part 2 Another relaxed day started with a visit to Eden beach. It is said to be the cleanest beach in Pondicherry. At a distance of around 10kms from our accommodation, it took us half an hour to reach there. We parked our car, changed in the pay use facility and then went to the beach.  The water was indeed clean and the waves quite high. We enjoyed the water and the waves while the kids also made their customary sand castles. We then showered, changed , did some shopping in the nearby shops and then started back towards the hotel.  The luggage was packed. We loaded it into our car and started towards the next accomodation. While booking, owing to some confusion 2 separate bookings were made for Puducherry meaning 2 nights in one accommodation and another night in a different place. So we were basically shifting from one accommodation to another. We checked in at 12:30 pm , settled the luggage in our rooms and then went to wash our c...

Day 5 Puducherry - Part 1 Being a relaxed day with not much to cover on the agenda and places being close to each other, we slept till a little late. Got ready and left from the hotel at 9am to reach the location for mangrove forest boating.  It was around 10 mins drive. We booked our tickets with one of the boating company. The ride started in 10 minutes time.  They took us through the mangroves and then allowed us sometime at one of the archaeological sites - Arikamedu.  We clicked quite some pictures there then got back to our boat. We enjoyed the beauty of the nature around and the boat ride. The ride was for an hour. From there, we drove towards Manakula Vinayagar temple. It's a beautiful dedicated to lord Ganesha. No long queues, no special tickets, simple serene darshan.  From there we went to Aurobindo Ashram. Footwear were to be removed outside the gate and mobile phones switched off. The place was ...

Day 4 Tirupati - Puducherry  The day started early and we left from our hotel by 5:25am.  Our first destination was Sri Lakshmi narayani temple in Vellore. They have a car parking inside gate 2. We had reached by 7:45am when only special darshan are allowed. General darshan are only allowed after 10am. We bought tickets for ₹100 per adult, kept our footwear in the shoe house and proceeded for the queue. The Narayani idol is made of 70kg gold and the ganpati idol with 1700kg silver. This place is also called Sripuram. We had peaceful darshan. It's a huge temple complex with green lish surroundings and loads of boards with quotes written in Hindi, English and Tamil. While we were exiting the campus around 9am, it has already started being crowded.  We started towards Kamakshi temple in Kanchipuram at a distance of 85kms. We reached the temple by 10:45am. We parked our car in the parking, keep our electronics and footwear in the car before getting in the queue. ...

Day 3 Tirumala The day was reserved for Tirupati Balaji darshan. We started for Kapila teertham at 7:35am. It was at a short distance from our hotel. Car parking was around the road side. We visited the temple and took a dip in the holy water. The water from the fall was refreshing however the one accumulated was rather dirty.  We exited by 8:50am and moved towards the Tirumala hill. A check post on the way does a thorough checking of all passengers and luggage that has to be passed through a scanner machine.  A person checks the complete vehicle as well. This consumed around 45 mins. The onward journey on to the hill through the ghats was very scenic. The best part was there were separate roads for upward and downward journey. This allowed the vehicles to zap through smoothly.  We had already booked "Special Entry Darshan" (SED) so entered through the ATC gate to park our car.  There are 2 major temples in ...

Day 2 Srisailam to Tirupati  We checked out from our hotel in Srisailam and started our onward journey towards Tirupati at 6:20am. On the way we were on the lookout for a place to eat. The very few places that we found on the way were supposed to be serving only by 12 noon. Surprisingly there were not many restaurants or eateries on the way. At around 12:45pm, we found a restaurant - Supreme Restaurant in Venkatagiri, Nellore. We went to enquire and got to know they were serving and had vegetarian options too.  We had a delicious lunch there and then started back by 1:20pm to reach out first destination at Sri Padmavathi ammavari temple dedicated to goddess Lakshmi. With a ₹50 per person entry ticket, it took us around 30 mins for the darshan. We entered through gate 3 , removed our shoes in the shoe stand. The exit was from gate 2, so it was needed to enter the temple premises through gate 3 again to get our shoes. Outside the temple premis...

Day 1  Pune to Srisailam  We had packed and loaded most of our bags on the previous day itself. We targetted to start by 2 am. By God's grace and cooperation from the kids we could start by 1:34am.  We had to cover ~800kms and hence this midnight travel was much needed to skip the traffic.  The roads were very smooth making the drive pleasurable and convenient. We covered around 450kms before taking a stop for breakfast at around 8:30am. It was a small outlet who could serve us tea, coffee and some dosa. We had some paranthas from home which served the purpose. The next stop was at 12:55pm for lunch at Hotel Sunrise. It was a clean place with decent food. The curry was on the spicier side and the tandoori roti was made of maida. We started at 1:35pm after having lunch to reach pathala ganga by 4:20pm. This is a sacred holy water on the banks of river Krishna. You need to descend around 450 steps to reach the bank. We stepped in the...

It's again that time of the year when majority of the globe is on annual leaves/vacation. There's code freeze across almost all domains. People try to unwind and prepare for the upcoming year with renewed zeal and enthusiasm. This year, our vacation is an extended one compared to the previous years. I will post the day wise details first as time permits and then consolidate the entire vacation into one big blog for complete reference. What we're going to cover this time around? A road trip in our XUV700 from our home in Pune covering multiple states Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra.  The high level route will look like this : PUNE --> SRISAILAM --> TIRUPATI --> PUDUCHERRY --> RAMESWARAM --> KODAIKANAL --> OOTY --> MYSURU --> KOLHAPUR 

Saint Dnyaneshwar took Samadhi(entombment) on the banks of river Indrayni. That samadhi is housed within the Dnyaneshwar Samadhi Temple at Alandi now. We started from home around 5pm on a Saturday. It was a 15km drive with some narrower streets to navigate. There's a parking space available where we parked our car and then proceeded towards the temple which was a short walk.  We joined the queue. The queue was well disciplined and was continuously moving. Being a weekend there was quite some rush. It took us around 45mins for the darshan. The sanctum has the samadhi of Saint Dnyaneshwar and idols of Vitthal-Rukmini. We took a round of the temple area and then sat for a while. My younger one was fascinated with the premise, taking it to be a cave and hence demanded to sit in the cave 😇. We then started back and reached home by 8pm.