From the Heights of Akasa Ganga .........

              Yes, you got it right. This is a travelogue. What a weird title, you may wonder. I agree with it, but there is a reason. This is the first part of the write up on the places I visited in the month of April, 2009. There was some ‘unplanned element’ in each of the visits, so it made them all the more memorable. Now let’s move on to the travelogue proper.

Lord Hanuman who beckons if we were to reach Tirumala by foot

                If you thought that Akasa Ganga were the Milky Way and presumed I were an astronaut, please be prepared to stand/ sit corrected! I visited the Akasa Ganga falls on the Tirumala when I had been there. It happened like this. At a very short notice, I had to accompany a newly- wed couple and a couple of elders on a pilgrimage to the Tirumala. I’m not talking about the bottlenecks or travails in arranging for a cottage, shuttling around for food, etc, because these can be expected of any short- notice trip. I’ll write about other trivia which may interest you. 

        On Day 1, on our way to the cottage, we noticed a signboard: ‘Ear boring done here’. It did not take long for us to realize that ear piercing was being done there!!  During our stay there, it became commonplace for us to look out for the board and have a hearty laugh whenever we passed by it! The visit to the ‘Pushkarini’ (temple tank) was unusual for us and yet, refreshing. Paying obeisance to the ‘Kshetra  Palaka’ (Territorial Deity), Varaha Narasimha, at His temple was yet another departure from the ‘Visit Tirumala-Visit Tiruchanoor’ routine that we usually followed. 

Deer on the way uphill by foot

Deer on the way uphill

Pushkarini 

                On Day 2, after the newly- weds entered the temple to attend the ‘Kalyanam’( Wedding) of Lord Venkateswara and Goddess Padmavati, the elders and I had to spend at least two hours. So we decided to make a tour of the water bodies on Tirumala- Akasa Ganga, Gogarbham and Papanasanam. While Gogarbham was a reservoir, both Akasa Ganga and Papanasanam were falls. As we drove through dense forests of the Seshachalam range, I recollected what my mom told me about the force of the Papanasanam falls- that, when she was a kid, her father held her shoulder with a strong arm eventhough she held the chains tight! When we reached the place, we realized that the water had long since been channelized so that pilgrims can have a shower through an animal- faced outlet on the high wall, with separate provisions for men and women. We wanted to see the falls cascading from the hills, and, what did we get to see? Something similar to water from a tap, except that the tap had an animal face and was not within one’s control! No wonder, knowledge is power. If only we had it, we would not have strained ourselves to climb down so many stairs! Akasa Ganga would be better, we thought. We had visited the place way back in the winter of 1993- on that occasion, I walked through the pool of water formed by the falls to get really close to the cascade. As we climbed a few steps down to reach the place which I recollected, I saw no water. For those of us who thought that it happened elsewhere, this was a reminder- of global warming! But, hope is not lost yet-if we managed to climb down a lot more steps, we could still see the falls. After the disappointment at Papanasanam, we simply could not give up on this one- so we climbed down and finally saw the falls and a larger pool of water created by them. Now, you might get a doubt as to how I have referred to the falls as ‘the heights’ even as I talked about ‘climbing down’. The climbing down was only from the last motorable point, and, moreover, the falls were located on the hills! Satisfied, we returned to our cottage, not to forget our ‘darshan’ of the ‘ear- boring’ signboard!