Calkin's Law of Menu Language
The number of adjectives and verbs that are added to the description of a menu item is in inverse proportion to the quality of the resulting dish.

The Tirupati images, will follow shortly, probably tomorrow, if I manage to transfer the images to a computer.

The legs that had taken me all the way up also took me to the place of my friends upanayanam. But we (the last grp) went too little too late. All there was time for was for a hearty, albeit cold, traditional rice dinner, followed by a hearty escape to spacious rooms which could comfortably accomodate all of us. After an hour of fart sessions, which made us laugh until the point of crying; we were recollecting all our happy memories of the four years we spent together in the hostel, some happy anecdotes, some sad stories, other witty ones, including some unusually funny stories. Ahh. I will miss those days. I stop here,; they will mostly end up as part of another post, that is, my student life @ my univ.
Morning came, and that awoke us. Part of the gumbal went to an early morning darshan. (Early morning, as in 4:30 am morning.) Luckily, for me, mine was scheduled at a more comfortable time of 8 am. And we did go. And it was a pretty fast darshan, going by how all others take. Would you believe it, we entered the temple complex by 8:15am, and we were back in our comfortably cool rooms by 9. (For the non-believers and first timers, the average wait of a free darshan there is 2 days. We went in a special entrance thanx to generosity of the relatives of the friend who had invited us to his upanayanam.) But inside, its the same for everybody. Unless u happen to know somebody who is anybody in that temple: the iyers or the ushers who regulate the crowd there, all u get is the same treatment that is given to all flavors of people. Quite the utopian temple, it seems. The treatment is simply a shout of jergandi, jergandi which keeps the people moving like a well-oiled train. U cant even get to spend a half-minute inside the sanctum sanctorum. On the way out, we collected our regulation share of laddoos. After all, Whats Tirupati without laddoos.
What did strike me in the temple, was the remarks that it is one of the biggest organisations, financially atleast. As you come out of the inner gopuram and start to go round that (a regular Hindu tradition), u hear the huge cacophonic jingle of the money machines sorting out coins and counting them. Followed by that, are iyers sitting behind bullet-proof glass counting the notes in all denominations: fifties, hundreds, five hundreds, thousands. I must say, it was one stupefying site. Quite lip-smacking, I must add. U must witness it for urself to get that kind of feeling. I mean, there was even a huge queue to put money into the hundi. (Even me donated, an amount of 250 to be exact)

After a light breakfast, followed by lunch 2 hours later, interspersed by another pooja for the function, where there was even a good photo session, we bade each other hearty farewells, promising to mail on the group more often, we left.
First stop, after the twisting turning road downhill was the temple at a nearby place called Tiruchanur. Legend has it that it is the wife of Lord Balaji who resides there. (Correct me if I am wrong). It was turning out to be a hot day, after the cool retreat of the hill temple. And it was getting extremely difficult to stand on the stone flooring in that sun. There was sure a lot of jumpings and runnings, with many playing hoppity skop trying to dance their way to more shady places.
After paying our due respect to the diety, off we were to another famous temple in AP, the temple at Kalahastri. Unfortunately, this is my first time here, and I do not seem to recollect much about this place. But atleast, the inner sanctum sanctorum was air-conditioned (Oh yes, it had AC).
Following this, well, there was nothing else to do, but to return back. It was, I must add, an extremely tiring journey back to Chennai, and as we approached the city, the traffic increased exponentially. Luckily, I reached home safe and sound @ 6pm.
That ends my mini pilgrimage tour in AP. Happily ended, I must add.