Exploring India Western Desert - Part1 - Ahmedabad - Dholavira

I don’t exactly remember the moment when I first heard the name Dholavira. It has been ages but surely it was some years after I was introduced to Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. I was now in Dholavira, ready to explore my first ever Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) site. Well, technically it is nowhere near the Indus, which only demonstrates the expanse of that civilization.

 

I reached Dholavira after 7hours drive from Ahmedabad and after literally passing through the endless white expanse of the Rann of Kutch, the salt desert. It was almost dark by the time I reached - I checked into the resort that I had booked online earlier. I had a short walk that night - All I heard now was the sound of the wind and a crackle under my feet of my shoes rubbing against salt, hard crystalline salt. This salt stretched for miles and endless miles all around.

Next day morning I took a few steps away from the crowds and started walking behind my resort – towards “nothing”, I soon realized. There were no mountains or lakes, not even flickering lights dotting the horizon. Just a blanket of white merging into another blanket of white.

 

In the noon I decided to visit Dholavira museum, Harappan civilization and Great Rann of Kutch. I climbed up the hillock and suddenly I was in the midst of the 5000 year old necropolis. First I reached what is now called the “bailey” and was believed to be a residential area for the inhabitants. As I explored more, I started noticing many of the familiar structures I had seen earlier in books. Those ubiquitous brick walls were everywhere and they were so robust that they still show no signs of crumbling after 5000 years.

 

Walking on those crystals of salt that are boundless and watching the sunset and the rising moon, both at the same time left me with no option than adding - Great Rann of Kutch is beautiful after the sunset too.

Thrilling experience - My story witnessing Vaikunta Ekadashi at Tirumala

"OM NAMO NARAYANAYA" is the only hymn everyone listens to in any part of Tirupati. Tirupati Tirumala temple is the biggest and most famous temple in India, surrounded by thick forests and seven hills and needs no introduction. Sastras and Puranas indicate that Mukti in Kaliyuga can be attained only by worshiping Sri Srinivasa.

Most of the pilgrims visit the temple by walking the seven hills that represent the seven hoods of Adi sesha. The seventh peak is the temple of seven hills.

I am extremely interested in reading about historical places of worship. This place has always fascinated me. While reading about the history of this temple, I stumble upon the auspicious day of Tirumala Vaikunta Ekadashi. Since then I always wanted to visit Tirumala on this auspicious day.

The most important ritual on the Vaikunta Ekadashi day is witnessing the opening of the door in the inner sanctum of the temple which is known as Vaikunta Dwaram or Swargada Bagilu (the gate to heaven). The name Vaikunta Dwaram indicates the door to Vaikunta - abode of Srihari Vishnu. This door is opened only on Vaikunta Ekadashi day and devotees are allowed to walk through the door which I happily did. I got to witness the most important event of the temple.

From Bangalore, my friend and I travelled to Tirupati by train.  We reached Tirupati at 3 p.m. and decided to take the TTD-bus from the railway station to reach the Tirumala hill. After a 45 minutes ride in the bus, we were in the seventh hill.

From the bus station, we decided to walk to the CRF office to reserve a room to keep our belongings. The rooms are provided to devotees by the temple authorities for a period of one day. After waiting for two hours in the queue at the CRF office, we finally got a spacious and clean room at Ram Bageecha Block-1 which is located in front of the temple. 

After the room registration, both of us walked happily towards our room. By the time, we reached our room it was already 7 p.m. We took the opportunity to freshen up and take some needed rest before queuing up for the Vaikunta Ekadashi day.

On the Vaikunta Ekadashi day, there is no special darshana. Everyone has to go through the free darshana. We joined the free darshana queue at about 10 p.m. at Vaikunta Queue Complex-2. 

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Pushkarini scared pond next to temple!

                                      

There were lots of devotees sleeping in the Balcony. The experienced devotees had already spread out their sheets of cloth and were sleeping on the floor in the open-area. I came to know from the devotees and the security personnel that the queue will start moving only after 9 a.m. the next day. I was heartbroken. 

Gallery that we were sleeping in.

                           

We decided to sleep under open sky. To sleep under the open sky surrounded by seven hills in Tirumala is a blissful experience. In spite of wearing extra clothes to keep us warm, by 1 a.m. the weather became very cold and we were freezing sleeping on the floor. We gave up and decided to walk back to our room to keep our self warm and get some sleep.

However, I was not able to sleep because my desire to witness the Vaikunta Dwaram kept me awake. After taking some rest in the room, I came back mentally and physically prepared to stand in the queue for 24 hours.

At about 3 in the morning, I took a thick heavy blanket and my travel pillow and head back to the queue complex to join the queue. However, the security personnel did not allow us to join the queue at the same place where we were standing in earlier. So, we joined the queue at the back which was 0.5 km behind from where we were initially as the crowd had increased in the meantime. I was thinking how to get back to our original position in the queue. We finally decided to jump the barricade and metal grills to reach our original position in the queue. I wish I could seize that moment and live it over and over again.

The next day at 8 a.m., the crowd was huge and a few people in the crowd started fainting. Witnessing the Vaikunta Dwara is definitely not for the faint hearted ones. After three hours of jostling, jumping the metal grills, and pushing, we finally passed through the security gate and were directed in to a big CAGE. They call it a HALL. Camera, Mobile Phones, and Electronic Items are not allowed inside the HALL. Therefore, I have no pictures to show what the HALL looked like.

It was 12 in the noon by the time we reached the waiting hall. There were 40 such waiting halls. Each of the waiting halls can accommodate nearly 400 devotees. There was a huge TV screen showing live activities in the inner sanctum of the temple. Some privileged neta was performing pooja and the priests were chanting shlokas in the local language. While waiting in the hall, there was another queue system to collect coupons for the 'laddus'.

At 6 p.m. in the evening, the whistles started blowing indicating that the TTD authorities are going to open the door of our waiting hall. It became clear that we will be taken for darshana. All devotees including us, who had been waiting in the hall, started to push each other and chanting 'Govinda' while exiting the waiting hall. 

I was holding the heavy blanket and pillow while jostling through the crowd. Luckily, I found a bag counter on our way to darshana to keep our belongings. The security staffs at the bag counter refused to take my bag at the beginning. Somehow I was able to convince them to accept my bag. After leaving the bag at the bag counter, I was relieved of the heavy burden and I could walk freely and peacefully in the crowd. 

We passed through a maze of queues for two and half hours. Finally, we reached the main temple around 8.30 p.m. The queue at the main temple was moving forward slowly with few stops by the security staff. We simply “floated” to the main temple with the help of pushes from the devotees.

My feeling after witnessing the Vaikunta Dwara was that this indeed is a gateway to the heaven. Our darshana part was over in less than a minute after waiting in the queue for 24 hours. The painful long wait and hurdles that we experienced just faded away when we saw Srihari Vishnu. This was one of the most auspicious days of my life. 

Picture source- Google. This is how the temple entrance looked like.

Picture source-Google. Temple Entrance.

The entire darshana ritual ended at 9.30 p.m. After the darshana ended, we decided to collect the world famous laddus and our bag from the counter. I realized that I did not collect a receipt from the bag counter when I dropped my bag. So, both of us were confused and did not know where to collect the bag from. 

We talked to the TTD staff and explained them where exactly we dropped our bag earlier. Unfortunately, the TTD staff had no clue where the “Foot Path Scanner-1” is. They showed us a few bag counters but it was not the bag counter where we dropped off the bag. The TTD staff asked us for the receipt unfortunately we did not have.   

We lost all our hopes of getting our bags. As a last resort, I approached Police officials for help. One of the police officials was very helpful and he took us to all possible bag counters. After an hour and a half of searching and explaining to the TTD staff about the location where we dropped off the bag, one staff member understood the location and pointed us to the right bag counter.

I am thankful to TTD staff and the Policeman who was with us throughout our bag search. We got lucky to find our bag at the bag counter. We both had a warm smile on our face. We feel blessed.  It was already 11.30 in the night by the time we got our bag.

We had to rush to go buy laddus as the laddu counter closes at 12 in the night and we had to leave our room next day early morning. So, we had to buy laddus before the counter closes at 12 a.m. Both of us were running to the laddu counter and luckily the Policeman, who helped us to find our bag, also helped us to get the laddus. We thanked the Policeman from the bottom of our heart.

We had a big smile when we reached our room. We freshened up and went in search of a restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we come back to our room to get the badly needed rest. We slept like a baby that night.

This is how i looked when we reached our room!

                                               

Next day we woke up early in the morning to catch a bus to come down from the hill to the reach railway station. We spotted a few deers on the way down and I was thrilled to see the deers. 

                                               

                                                

                                       

The trip to Tirumala participating in the Vaikunta Ekadashi event is indeed once in a lifetime experience. It is worth the 24 hour wait in the queue, freezing sleepless night, and a hectic day to witness Sri Venkatesha on Vaikunta Ekadashi day. I felt enlightened and more religious. My belief in 'Sri Venkatesha' became all the more stronger. I will always cherish this divine experience for the rest of my life.

 

Thanks for reading!

Footnote- I give the credit to the TTD (Tirupati-Tirumala-Devasthanams) management for the efforts of maintaining order and provide as much facilities to the devotees at the temple.

In the waiting hall, huge ventilation systems were working efficiently. I never felt congested or smelly. Toilets were clean and dry (a big surprise!). Volunteers and security staff were polite and courteous.

The problem is with the devotees. Every devotee wanted to move ahead of each other. There is no shame in pushing others to go ahead in the crowd since this is a big event. Few of the male devotees may take advantage of the females. So be prepared to confront them and give them ten times back.

In the Train!

View while we traveling back to Bangalore from Tirupathi!