A VISIT TO TIRUPATI

On Saturday, my sister and I decided to make an impromptu visit to Tirumala. We boarded a volvo at Majestic at around 9.30 in the morning. We reached Tirupati at about 3.30. After buying tickets for a Darshan we started our climb. It took us about 4 hours to reach the top, but was absolutely worth it. The mountains in the dark were tinted red with the setting sun and cool breeze washed itself against our faces. It was beautiful.

On reaching we booked a room. When we went to collect the key, I made a rather terrible faux paus. The guy at the counter asked us " Are there men?" in telugu. Not to be proved any inferior, I decided to reply back in Telugu. I said "Odhu" ( No in my dictionary). He jerked his head upward stalling in whatever he was writing and said "What?". Deciding that he was rather deaf I repeated "Odhu". He looked rather stunned and my sister was suddenly jerking me back. I turned to her and said " Did I say anything wrong? What does Odhu mean?". With a very embarassed smile directed towards the counter guy she whispered to me "It means Dont Want". I was like "Oh" and then burst out into paroxyms of laughter. Luckily the guy at the counter seemed to have a decent sense of humour. He smiled and gave us the key.This was probably at around 9.00 in the night.

When we went to the room, much to our misfortune the loo was disgusting, the room not cleaned and the mattresses were damp. After much debating we decided that god would certainly forgive us if we didn't stay for a Darshan. We immediately returned the key where we had a lively argument with the counter guy, refusing to pay cash for cleaning the room. Saw no reason to. It had not been cleaned for us. We saw no reason to pay when we had not even occupied the rooms. We then went to the office to collect our caution deposit. The young punk at that counter actually demanded 10 bucks to give us back our CD. My sis was all set to pay it, when I just turned to her and was like " Forget it. There is no way we are paying a bribe in Tirumala!!!". Grabbed the money from the punk's hand and ran out of the place. We then boarded a bus to Tirupati and from there took another bus back to Bangalore at arount 11.30 in the night to reach at 5.30 in the morning.

We were feeling extremely guilty for not having had a Darshan so had a bath and left for a Balaji temple at Domlur to assauge our guilt. End of a trip which was a series of unfortunate/fortunate events!!!!!