Chava Kiran’s Blog

Previous Saturday we went to Srisailam. Its very hot summer and one of the hottest days. We started very early in the morning from Hyderabad. That is 5AM. Reached Srisailam on almost zero traffic roads by 9:30AM. The road is OK, there are some places where it is in bad condition overall bearable road. Compared to SuryapeTa road, this Srisailam road is almost free. I don’t see many towns and villages also in this area. There seems to be good growth opportunity in this area. We directly went to Darshan and came out from temple by 11:30AM. The temple is good. At the first glance you don’t see many of sculptures here like Beluru, but when you carefully examine there indeed beautiful sculptures every where in this temple. Almost every part of outer big wall is filled with carvings describing different things in those days. Like war-elephants, war-horses, actual war scenarios, people fighting with bears, somebody beheading and his relatives mourning at the same place (see the picture) etc.. etc.. If you go there carefully encircle outer wall and u can see the life style of those centrues (500 years back?).

In side the temple also there are beautifully, carefully molded elephants. I saw many inscriptions some in Telugu and some in Kannada. If you know any book where these are all explained, please leave a comment would love to go through them. And the big Nandi is really gigantic in its structure. It is awesome Nandi. watching it from back reminds me descriptions from Gilgamesh heaven bull. It took one to two hours to complete Darshan. Unlike Tirumala here people are not pushing out! And the devotees are also very friendly. This kind of behavior is not present in Tirumala where even devotees push you like hell. May be because of summer holidays there are many devotees present. It seems actually we can go inside Garbha GRuha (sanctum sanctorum ) and touch Siva Lingam. But today may be because of heavy crowd we were not allowed inside. After Darshan we came out and visited Manohara Gundam, this is a small room on the left of actual temple inside Shiva temple complex. Inside this room there are water, pure water. Just like water at Maha Nandi temple we can visible see anything at the bottom. Like one rupee coins are clearly visible.

After that we visited other small Lingams in the same complex. There are many Lingams in the same complex. Old Mallikaarjuna temple is one interesting Lingam.

After that we went out and entered into Goddess BramaraaMba temple complex. This temple is much more beautiful. In particular the pillers and carvings, sculptors present inside. After Darshan of Bramaramba we went to Prasadam section and had delicious Pulihora, Laddu. And then enjoyed freshly made Moosambi juice.

It is around 11:30 AM. We went to paataala Ganga from here. This is actually River Krishna flowing in deep valley. The name paataala is aptly suited for this place. It is too deep. Now we have Srisailam Dam. and there are good amount of water. Even then the water is too deep. It may be much more deeper in the olden days. and paataala Ganga is very suitable name. We took cable car to cover half of the distance from there we walked all the steps and took a small boat ride in the water. I have serious plans to visit Akka mahadevi temple. In my previous visit I liked both the boat ride and actual caves. But boats are available only up to 12PM and we missed the last boat. Probably next time we will cover it. After small boat ride we took a wonderful bath in river Krishna and came up to Srisailam again. It is now 3PM and had Lunch in Ilapuram? Hotel. Lunch is OK.

Then we went to Sakshi Ganapati temple followed by Sikhara Darshanam. Then back to Hyderabad by 10PM.

శ్రీశైలం ప్రయాణం (Read this on my Telugu Blog)