My first trip to Vaishnodevi was unimpressive. Climbing was hard, and it only served to highlight how badly out of shape I was, while my in-laws managed to cope so much better. Further, I hadn’t quite realized that the cave experience wouldn’t be the same as I had imagined, since the original cave was only opened at certain times a year, and that we only entered a newly created tunnel, one far easier to access, and hence more manageable with the crowds that thronged the mountain shrine. The resulting experience at the shrine, for barely a fraction of a second, hardly compared to what I had expected / imagined / heard about. So, for me, Vaishnodevi was like any other temple, nothing to write home about, something that was reflected (though not explicitly mentioned) in the blog post I wrote then.
The Sripuram Golden temple at Vellore was one temple I had been hearing a lot about, but had no plans of visiting on my Tirupati trip. For one thing, it wasn’t an ancient temple which draw me much more than anything else, and secondly, I felt it would be a better idea to make a visit from Chennai rather than Tirupati. However, as it happened, we found ourselves taking the APSRTC package tour to Kanipakkam and Sripuram, thanking our stars for the decision, since it poured constantly all day long, and we saw flooded roads all along the route. We would surely have been stalled had we taken any other mode of transport!
The Sripuram Golden temple has been built on 100 acres of land in Vellore by the Narayani Peetham headed by Shakti Amma. It’s a beautifully constructed temple situated in the centre of exquisitely laid out gardens and a pathway in the shape of a star. Cameras were not allowed inside, so I could not take any pics, but a google search yielded too many, so here are a few, as well as youtube video taking us through the temple.
For more information, go to the temple website which has all the details you could possibly want to know - http://www.sripuram.org/
To incite you to want to know more, here are a few photographs. I reiterate that all these images are from the internet!
Information:
The Sripuram Golden Temple is about 120 Km from Tirupati and about 150 Km from Chennai.
The nearest railway station is Katpadi, 18 Km away, and the nearest bus station is at Vellore, 10 Km away.
There are plenty of buses from Chennai, Bangalore and Tirupati to Vellore.
APSRTC conducts a package tour to Kanipakkam and Sripuram Golden temple, by non-AC bus. The bus starts fromTirumala a 8:00 AM and reaches Srinivasam Complex, Tirupati at 9:30 AM. The bus returns to Tirupati by 7:30 PM. The bus only runs if there are a minimum of 10 passengers, so please check in advance at the APSRTC counters at Tirumala / Tirupati before making any plans. Also, they allow enough time for darshan, so it is quite a comfortable experience.
I also never felt that I should visit this temple as I am also interested in visiting ancient ones. But who knows, like you I may also land up there. I heard that no camera, no mobile is allowed inside the temple grounds.
ReplyDeleteLooks a very opulent temple... Magnificent!!
ReplyDeletenice temple ...
ReplyDelete@Chitra: I would love to hear what u think of the temple after u visit it!! and u are right.... u can go in just with the purse and nothing more... security is really tight!! and u cant even get a decent pic from outside!
ReplyDelete@Arti: Opulent is just the word!!
@Team G Square: it is!!
yes siripuram temple is so good and see this ramalayam its also very good
ReplyDeleteThanks Krishna!
ReplyDelete