Trip to God's Own Land (Kerala)

During the 3rd week of August, I had the chance to visit God's Own Land. As a part of my pilgrimage to Sabarimala I also visited some temples between Thissur and Sabarimala.

On 14th evening my journey started towards Kerala, by the Thiruvananthapuram Mail. My destination in Kerala was Sabarimala, but we headed towards Thissur so that we can visit few temples on the way to Sabarimala. We reached Thissur by 04.30Am, we refreshed and headed to the nearby Ramar Temple. As per our plan the temple to be visited was Vadakkunnathar in Thissur and then head to Guruvayr to visit the Krishna Temple. We were able to complete both these places by 8.30Am, after which the Guruvayur temple will be closed for morning poojas for 30mins.

Then we headed to Mamiyoor a Shiva Vishnu temple. This temple is also famous because of our TamilNadu CM for presenting a baby Elephant 4 years back. We visited the Triprayar Ramar temple on our way towards Kaladi. This is the birth place of Adi Shankaracharya the founder of Advaita Vedanta School. After a short break and a dip in the near by river we headed to Chottanikara to visit the Bhagawati Amman Temple. When we reached there we were told that the temple will be opened after 4Pm we were chit chatting about all topics that come into our mind. After our prayers at this temple we then headed to Vaikom Mahadevar temple, which is a Shiva temple. Then we headed to Kaduthuruthi, which is also a Shiva temple. The last temple that we visited for the day was Ettumaanoor which is another Shiva temple.

The number of temple we visited on a single day was 10 and to be frank I don't remember a single deity I visited. The reason is all images look same with very little difference that one can notice. After a good sleep in the night we got ready for the next day to visit another set of temples. The first temple we visited for the day was Ambalappuzha which is a Krishna temple. After a good darshan at this temple we headed to Haripad which is a temple for Subramanyar or otherwise called Murugan. We also visited the Hanuman temple next to this one.

As we wanted to reach the river Pampa by 1.30Pm we skipped all other temples on the way and headed directly to Pampa. After a quick bath at Pampa we started our journey towards the Aiyappan shirne by 2.30Pm. It is a 7km stretch on the ghats with steep climbs and slippery way we managed to reach the temple gates by 4.30Pm. As the door of the temple was opened at 4Pm after a month’s closure we had a good darshan with fewer crowds. Around 5.30Pm we got settled in our rooms and planned that we will visit the temple once again by 9.30Pm for the closure of the doors. When we came out by 9.30Pm we were shocked to see the crowd. With the help of a Bank Manager we were able to visit the Head guru of Sabarimala and also a close view of the god.

As the crowd was very high the next day we planned to get down eary as possible. We started back by 7.30Am and reached the base by 9.00Am. After a quick breakfast we headed towards Kottyam for our return journey towards Chennai. Since one of our travelmate had to catch the 1.30Pm Train we had to reach Kottayam without stop. We were able to reach in time because of the driver. From 1.30PM we were in the station to catch our 5.30Pm Chennai Mail.

Even though the journey was a hectic one, we were able to visit lots of places. It was a treat to eyes as everywhere it looked green beacuse of the heavy monsoons. The next day when I travelled from Chennai to Trichy it was opposite to that of Kerala. Everywhere dry land and it was looking like a desert with no greenaries. The only satisfying moment was when I saw river Cauvery was filled with water. It is told that after 3 yrs there is water in Cauvery.