Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Religious retreat -II

My dad had decided that it was time again to do a round of circumabulations in a bunch of temples. The last time we did something similar was almost 8 months back. This time it was decided that we will visit a bunch of temples in and around Trichy. My folks left from Coimbatore on Friday and reached Trichy that evening. I left for Trichy on Friday night from Bangalore and reached there on the wee hours of Saturday morning (4.40 am). My uncle and dad were waiting at the railway station to pick me up and we headed to my uncle's place. From there we took a Quallis and started from Trichy at 5.45 am.

Our first destination was a place called Tirunageshwaram. The place is a 2 hours and 30 minutes drive from Trichy going via Thanjavur and Kumbakkonam. This place is predominantly for the Rahu (planet) God. After doing a set of "religious procedures" to please the God (I am going to eschew the nitty gritty details here), we left the place at 10.30 am. Our next temple was called the "Uppaliyappan" temple. This is a 5 kms ride and it was a really nice temple to visit. The residing deity is one of the many incarnations of Lord Vishnu. From there, we got back to Kumbakonam where we visited two more temples. The first one was called "Naachiyar Kovil" with the residing deity of Goddess Lakshmi (referred to as Komala valli thaayaar). From there, we headed to the next temple, "Ramaswamy Temple". We headed back from there to Trichy and reached the place at 3 pm. We took rest for the rest of the afternoon and then around 6 pm, headed to Srirangam. The temple diety Lord Ranganatha, in his majestic "Annantha Sayanam(sleeping posture)" is always a sight of awe. We headed back to Trichy at 7.45 pm. I had to catch my train back to Bangalore that night. Reached Bangalore on Sunday morning while my family went back to Coimbatore on Sunday afternoon.

The interesting part about this trip was that I learnt some very interesting facts and legends about each of these temples and also got some wonderful insight about the greatness of Hinduism. It was quite a refreshing experience and what could be more enriching than spending time with family on such trips. Hope I do this more often than not!

2 comments:

Vidya said...

Hey this is very well written. It would be great if you could share the interesting facts and legends of the temples that u had visited!!

Srini said...

Thanks lady! Now, that you have given me the idea, I will surely try and compile my trips and make a useful post of it, someday....