~~Memories: kochi days~~

While we were in Kerala we were planning where to go for weekend ,one friend came up with an idea and said lets go to Sabarimalai.  This was during the off season time ,so we were in for the game. We told to few other people in the office and quickly we got a big gang. It was decided we all put proper maalais and get necessary items needed for the trip as we wanted to be like the proper devotees. So we went for shopping in the evening got our black attire bags etc.

We got up early in the morning went to the local temple and priest was really impressed to see the young and religious crowd. So one by one he performed main pooja and gave the erumudi to each one of us. We booked a 15 seater van for the weekend and we began our journey with devotional songs in the back ground. We visited few temples on the way. Our first stop our Eruveli since for most of us it was our first trips we were called as கண்ணி swamis and we were given some color powders to play with. We visited a nearby temple and mosque at that place and took bath in the nearby river. From there we travelled for an hour and  reached the pamba, being off season and just after monsoon the river was clean and flowing to the brim. We spent almost an hour in the river and then started our main task of climbing up the hill.

It was past six when we started the climb and it was getting dark. Being bare legged walking in that path was really tricky. Though more than 80% of the path is paved with concrete there were those 20% which was filled with gravels. I felt sorry for many people who were struggling to go up, there were many who need first aid it and many had to use dolaks to go up. Government could build a winch like in Palani at least old people can make use of it.There shops around the path which were ridiculously priced charging 2 or 3times the normal amount.I hate it when I see business centers around religious place. It took solid 4 hours to reach the top though we were exhausted we headed directly to the temple.

 Though it was off season there would have been more than thousand people in the temple, climbing the 18 steps was our next step and we had to wait sometime as only few people can go in that steps at a time. I climbed the step one by one and finally had a good darshan. Once everybody was done we headed to a nearby restaurant and had a good dinner. We had a good sleep in night and next day woke up had bath and went to have darshan again. Then we got the kovil prasadham,some souvenirs and  started our walk down. Walking down was more difficult as our legs have become tired but we eventually made it down.  The legs were literally broken and it took a day full of rest to get back to normal.