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Dear Members,

I could book a Special Entry Ticket ( of Rs.300 ) for 5 of us on 14 Dec with a reporting time of 9 pm. We are 5 adults and 1 kid ( 9 years ) --> Kid can enter for free with us as per the TTD website.

Requesting help here with the below answers & general planning.

1) Should I get a free token / Pass for Kid from any counter?
2) How to book accommodation at Tirumala for the 14th night.
3) What other temples and places we can visit during this travel? Family members would like to visit Kalahasti.

On 14 Dec 2023, we can start from Bangalore early Morning and have the 15th and 16th in hand. Need to reach back by 16 late evening to Bangalore.

Many thanks for your suggestions.

I have no experience with the Rs 300 ticket privileges as I have donor pass. I will let others to give their advice. I can give my advice as follows:

1. Donot depend on booking accommodation on the hill directly. It never works. It should always be done in advance. My personal advise is to avoid accommodation on the hill totally as you have very good options in Tirupati. If you have advance booking for a room on the hill, just go to CRO office and they will allocate room for you. They donot accept cash as the deposit of Rs 500 will be returned after you vacated to your bank.
2. When on the hill if you have your personal car, donot forget to visit Japali- Hanuman temple in the middle of a deep jungle and requires you to walk for a couple of kilometres. It is superb. There are many other famous tourist attractions (may be dozen places) like the oldest natural made arch on this planet etc. Typically there are TTD buses who can take you to all places as a package for a very nominal fees if no personal car or you can hire a Taxi which are very common on the hill. Please remember that Tirumala is not a tourist place to stay for a couple of days on the hill but as a responsible citizen I personally learnt the hard way to vacate my room after darshan and not extend my room because I am privileged as there are thousands of people sleeping outside in open air due to non availability of rooms on hill.

3. In Tirupati also , there are a set of standard tourist places to visit which are covered by Taxi wallas like Padmavathi temple, Kalyana Venkateswara temple ( must visit place at Srinivasa mangapuram as you can spend some quality time right in front of the huge statue at very close quarters and it is an experience that cannot be explained in words. Mind you, you get only few seconds to see the lord on the hill.

4. All the tourist places including Kalahasti are few minutes drive from Tirupati. You can cover all places in a matter of couple of hours.

5. We personally have also included one more place to visit which is a bit far off from Tirupati called Kanipakam Vinayaka temple .It is a very famous temple also. You can google for directions.

Apart from Srikalahasti and Padmavati temples, you can also visit Isckon temple in Tirupati Town which is very beautiful. They also have a pure veg restaurant within the premises.

Since you have a kid, if he (and your family) are interested in science/space and have some time at hand then you can visit Regional Science Centre - Tirupati. We have been there couple of times during my visits over last few years and my kids enjoyed the hands on science experiments which were fun even for adults and reading about space/scientific trivia & achievements. Good change for everyone.

Good morning fellow devotees. By grace of Lord Venkateshwara, we (me and my mother) are going for Special Darshan (Rs 300 ticket) at 2 pm, Saturday, 9th December. We couldn't get accommodations at Tirumala and finally decided that we will leave(self-drive) by 6am, hoping to reach by 11 am. We will either return same evening or stay overnight at Tirupati, based on how things go.

A bit nervous since this is our first pilgrimage to TTD and have a few queries:

1) Which location should I put on gmaps for parking?

2) What options do we have for bathing at Tirumala? Though we will leaving home after bathing, we want to clean up once more before Darshan. The website mentions bathrooms in queue halls. Can anyone clarify about them.

3) We are prepared for long wait in the queues if needed but any pointers on approximate time on a Saturday would help. Also, if we report earlier, does that help?

4) Any other advice for a first time pilgrim.

Weekends are super crowded. You can expect wait time anywhere between 2-4 hours or even more.

I have seen people reporting earlier than report time and being allowed. If you reach early, you can enter the queue and most likely there won't be a problem specially 1 hour or so before report time.

Please note that when you report at Alipri vehicle gate before starting the hill journey, there would be detailed check and all passengers have to get down and they would also check each and every luggage. So be ready to spend half an hour to one hour depending on the rush. No plastic water bottles (one time use) are allowed to be carried so please carry water in Tupperware /Glass bottles as needed. You won't find packaged water bottles in Tirumala but there are water dispensers.

Since you are going for first time, be prepared for heavy rush and sitting in waiting hall (some call them cages) for hours together. You can carry your own water and small quantity of snax if needed, specially if traveling with kids/elderly. TTD volunteers are everywhere and they manage with best of their abilities. So be patient and go with the flow. You will get to spend only few seconds before the Lord before you are pushed out so prepare yourself accordingly beforehand. Hundi for donation would be after you finish and come out. You can spot it easily as there would be some queue.

Have a great Darshan and leave your worries behind.

No worries on that front. We are from Guwahati and have experienced 'being caged' many times on going to Maa Kamakhya Temple for the Puja. :)

Thanks for rest of the tips as well.

Have a great darshan :)

Just one more thing. They give you computerized paper slip at the Alipiri gate entry. Keep it safe as you will need it during return journey. Also, there would be a time stamp on it and you should not reach uphill before that time. AFAIK it is about 20-25 minutes. This is to ensure people don't over speed. So respect that time otherwise they may blacklist your car for next journey. Same is true for return journey so please maintain speeds within allowable limits and you will be fine.

Also you need to collect Laddu's (Prasadam) as soon as you come out after SriVari Darshan.
Location: TTD Laddu Counter behind main Temple (you can buy additional laddu's by paying INR50/- for each)
Free Lunch & Dinner@ Anna Prasadam Center

Wish you a Happy Safe Journey, Have a great Sri Vari Drashan

Thank you Mystic, Aviator_guy for your responses. It helped me to draw below plan. Hope this looks Ok.

14 Dec :

1.Start early from Bangalore ( We will be driving in our personal car ) & Check into Hotel
2. Visit to Japali- Hanuman temple
3. Tirupati Balaji Darshana at 9pm , reach back hotel for Stay.

15 Dec :

1.TTD Pacakge Buses Or Personal car drive to Temples around Tirupati
2. Iskon Tirupati
3. Reach Kalahasti & Stay.

16 Dec :

1. Kalahasti Darshana early morning
2. Start driving back to Bangalore
3. Visit to Kanipakam Ganapathi temple enroute
4. Reach Bangalore by evening.

Travelling with Parents, hence would like to cover more temples. Please suggest if we can visit more to this list!

Your darshan time is 9 pm and it may be late night by the time you finish darshan and start return journey. AFAIK, they stop vehicle movement (up and down) during some period in the night. Please check on that to plan accordingly.

Also, you need not wait till 9 pm for entry. They may allow early entry depending on the rush. So you can report early if your plan permits and finish darshan before they stop Hill traffic if that's the case.

Appalayagunta Prasanna Venkateshwara Swamy temple. About 15km from Tirupati. The Lord has the right hand in Abhaya Mudra.

Parasurameswara temple, Gudimallam. One of the most ancient Shiva temples, Dates back to 3 BC. About 25 km away from Tirupati.

The road conditions to Srikalahasti are quite bad in addition there are numerous speed-humps because of construction work, and lots of slow-moving trucks. Would suggest that you spare yourself and your car of the trouble, take APSRTC bus to Srikalahasti and back (preferably over even cabs).

Tiruttani Subrahmanyaswamy temple - about 60km away. Good roads. You can directly get to Chittoor from there if planning on the return leg.

Very true! Last time my time slot was 8 pm but I was allowed in at 3 pm. Maybe I was lucky but I’d suggest trying to enter around 6 pm.

I will make a slight modifications in your plan.

1) On Dec 14th, on the way while going towards Tirupati, goto Kanipakam Temple and take special entry darshan and you can get darshan done in less than 20 to 30 minutes. Its good to goto Ganesha temple first instead of last. You

2) Also, after going to Kalahasthi, generally people don't goto other temples and return to home straight. Of course, different families have different belief, but just mentioning it here. Its up to you to according to your family customs.

Alipiri to Tirumala ghat roads are closed between 12 am midnight to 3 am early morning. Do you have room booking at Tirumala or Tirupati? However , i strongly suggest you to enter the queue by 5 pm itself and then you may come out by 8.30 pm or so worst case and go for dinner. That way you really dont have to enter queue at 9 pm. You can even drive down to Tirupati comfortably and go for dinner at Tirupati itself, in case if you have rooms at Tirupati.

PLease do note that Tirumala will be quite cold in winter and little difficult for elderly/aged parents. So for them suggest you to carry winter clothes for them.

On Dec 15th, you can visit local temples mentioned by our other members and also visit Govindarajapuram temple near Tirupati Railway station ( take auto from hotel, don't take car) and also TTD Namuna aalyam which is a mimic of Tirumala temple little bit, which you can see comfortably that you can do inside Tirumala Ananda nilayam temple (https://maps.app.goo.gl/AgEsGo8DqYaTDMbM8)

Regarding Kalahasti stay, i really don't think you have to stay there and there are not many great hotels. Usually people do a quick trip to Kalahasti from Tirupati. YOu better stay in Tirupati itself and leave early morning to Kalahasti, finish darshan which can be done in max 2 to 3 hours if you go early being a saturday. And then you can reach back bangalore by post lunch itself.


-Ravi

Thank you very much Aviator_guy , adisan, and ravib. Yours & one of my colleague's suggestions helped me a lot to plan, and make some decisions when at Tirumala. We completed our temple visits and reached Bangalore today. Below is the action summary of the last 3 days.

14-Dec :
Started from Bangalore at 6:30 AM and reached Kanipakkam Ganapathi temple. Entered the temple with Athi Sheegra Darshana entry ticket ( Rs. 250 per person ). We waited for 30 minutes as temple was closed for Noon Pooja. We had lunch at Kanipakkam temple and started to Tirumala.

Reached Tirumala around 3:30 pm and our plans went for a toss. The person who was supposed to help us to book rooms there didn't turn up after making us wait for a couple of hours & we had to struggle a bit. Finally got only 1 room at Shankar Mutt ( near S V Museum ) and checked in 6:30 pm. This meant I and my wife had to sleep in our car parked at Mutt's secured parking space for that night.

We got delayed in entering the Special entry Darshana queue until 7:30 pm ( Our ticket was for 9 pm, but the person at the entry checking was allowing everyone with tickets ).

It took 1h30m (9 pm) to reach the compartment rooms and we waited for another 1h45m there ( till 10:45 pm). Once we were out of this compartment, the next leg of the queue took another 1h15m ( till Midnight ) for Darshana.

We got a really good Darshana of Balaji and everyone was happy to be blessed.

It took another 1 hour to collect Laddus.

Few key takeaways:

• Better not to try luck while at Tirumala for Room booking unless you have a trustworthy & reliable source. I waited for 2 hours watching others "getting" room easily with agents while the same agents refused to even entertain my requests.
• Backpacks , Biscuit packets, etc were allowed which we weren't aware of before. Please do take water bottles ( they can be refilled while in the queue) and small eats if you are with kids. Our son was very hungry and our assumption that there would be Annaprasadams while in queue was wrong. Some fellow devotee in the queue provided a biscuit packet just by seeing him and we are very grateful for his Prerana & act.
• Only 1 Free Laddu & 2 extra laddus ( Rs.50 for each ) per ticket are given. I had to enter another queue on the first floor to get 5 more extra laddu's.
• It gets very cold during the night and the whole Tirumala is full of mist till Noon. Better to carry winter clothes & an umbrella.

15-Dec:
We were ready by 9:30 am and thought of visiting Varahaswamy temple. It was very crowded & so skipped the plan. Strolled around the temple for a while and started to Tirupati.

Iskon Tirupati.

Had Darshan there & Lunch at their Govnida Restaurant.

Padmavathi Ammavaari temple.
It was crowded and took a while to get a parking space. ( Near Gate 2 ).

-Entered with Special Entry ticket ( ticket Rs.200 per person ). Many were trying to scam by forcing people to buy a Dhothi, which is actually required only for Kunkumarchane ( ticket Rs.250 per person ).

-Mobile Phones are not allowed & have to be checked in at counters. Better to leave them in the car / Room to save from queuing hassles.

Drive to Kalahasti
The road is tarred for most of the 37 km & was OK to drive. Few places traffic piled up due to only 2 lanes, but got many stretches where I could overtake trucks. Except rain slowing us down, the Journey took less than an hour.

Stay in Kalahasti: MGM Grand, a walkable distance from Kalahasti temple. It has a safe parking space & an attached restaurant. Rooms are expensive for what they provide, but the hotel has very good utilitarian value.

16 Dec:

Had a very good Darshana at Kalahasti temple morning at 6:15 am. It had a good number of devotees, but a very fast-moving line. We entered in Normal queue. But while exiting around 7:15 am, we could see the normal queue had many people waiting.

Started back to Banglore post breakfast and reached by 5:30 pm.


Thank you again for every suggestion made here. Will use this as a ready reference for temples to visit next time.

In yesterday's BLR Hindu: