The Elephanta Caves , located on Elephanta Island, or Gharapuri, about 11 Km off the coast of the Gateway of India, Mumbai, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A visit to these caves, excavated probably in the 6 th century CE, is awe-inspiring, and also thought-provoking. Over the years, I have visited the caves a number of times, and also attended a number of talks by experts in the fields of art, history and archaeology on the caves. Together, they help me understand these caves, their art, and the people they were created for, just a little bit better. Every new visit, every new talk, every new article I read about the caves, fleshes out the image of what the island and the caves would have been like, at their peak. I last wrote about the caves on this blog, in 2011, almost exactly 11 years ago. Since then, my understanding of the caves has, I would like to think, marginally improved. Hence this attempt to write a new and updated post, trying to bring to life, the caves of Elephan
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