Three Time Lucky at Guruvayur

I must say this trip was quite an experience. I managed to do only some parts of my plan and not the whole thing. But that by itself was more satisfying. In one of earlier blog posts, I had listed down the itinerary. A somewhat extensive one - but I had not considered the biggest constraint - fatigue and timings of the temple. Some lessons came forth that I will bear in mind whenever I visit Kerala next. And I surely will!

Something that struck me first was the warmth in the air. It was not the stiffling heat, but a balmy one. It was not so sticky as it usually gets in Chennai or Mumbai. I take it that it is because of the dust and pollution that humidity makes you feel sticky in the aforementioned cities. Thrissur and Guruvayur, in contrast, did not have mad levels of pollution. The air rather makes you feel healthy. No wonder you see all that greenery there. It is the warmth that helps them grow as well.

My next observation is about the water in the land. It may be location specific. But from what I could see, in the places surrounding Palakkad, Thrissur and Guruvayur, every now and then you can see a stream or a canal. Streams have clear waters. Near Palakkad, there are really tall mountains from where the rivers and streams might originate. It was quite refreshing to see that the land is not as parched as you normally expect to see on the other side of the mountains, i.e. in Tamil Nadu.

The white veshti and angavastram is THE best attire for the Kerala climate. No other garb can give you as much comfort as the seemingly unassuming cotton cloth. Wow! People can just about do anything wearing the veshti. From climbing trees to riding the Bullet and driving cars. I know, we have seen people in lungis climb coconut trees and seen Kamal Hassan in madisaaru style saree riding a bullet. But what beats real experience?

The food... wow again! I know of some friends who can't stand the sight of Kerala food. I am quite the opposite. I quite love their diet, including the par boiled rice which is hand pounded. You somehow get the feeling that you get to eat a lot and yet it does not load your stomach too much. For a foodie like me, that is such a nice thing! :-)

The temple comes next. A very typical architecture graces the temples of this state. You can see similar architecture in Mangalore, Udupi and Kollur as well. I take it that it is because of the Malabar influence on those temples and their cultural history. There are somethings that I do have my own questions on... I will come to them.

We took a train from Bangalore (2677 Ernakulam Exp). We reached Thrissur at 4:30PM on Saturday Sep 8th and were in Guruvayur by 5:45PM. I had reserved accomodation at the Guruvayur Devaswom Accomodation facility in advance. You can do that by sending them a DD for the appropriate amount. Call them at the contact numbers provided here. We were able to enter the queue by 6:45PM for the evening darshan. We finished the darshan by 8:45PM. After a nice dinner (we packed some food from home), we went to bed early.

We woke up at 12AM, took bath and went to stand in the queue for Nirmalya Darshanam (from 3AM to 3:20AM, said to be the most auspicious darshanam) at 1:10AM. At that time, there were probably a 100 people standing in front of us in the queue. Can you believe that? As time progressed, the queue only lengthened. There was a separate ladies queue, which was much shorter in length. But Sujatha and Gauri stayed with me.

At about 2:15AM, you could hear ladies singing songs in praise of Lord Guruvayurappan. This went on, on and off, till almost 2:50AM. After that, the police came asked people to form a proper queue. The length shortened. Only now I realised after seeing how long the queue had progressed that - there might have been atleast 500 more people standing in the queue for the Nirmalya Darshanam. Come to think of it, would 600 people manage to get darshan within 20 minutes. I started doing my math. I told Sujatha that we might be lucky to get darshan in the 3:15AM to 3:20AM time window. After that, it was all the abhishekams and neivedyam darshanams.

The temple doors finally opened only at 3:05AM and the queue started moving quickly. As calculated, we got our darshan at about 3:15-3:17AM. A very beautiful sight, it is indeed, to behold the Lord devoid of all material alankaarams. There might have been some 30-40 more people who would have got the Nirmalya Darshanam. The rest would have gotten to see the abhishekams and other puja. After the darshan, we went to collect the prasadam and realised that there were not open until 4AM. The most cherised item, Nei Payasam, was not going to be available until 5AM. We decided to come back later for the prasadam. We went to our room and slept for a few hours.

After we woke at about 10AM, we decided that we did not have enough time to undertake the journey till Thriprayar to visit the Lord Rama temple. So, we went to Punnathoorkotta. The Elephant Sanctuary is located here. I think there were atleast some 70 elephants who were housed in this sanctuary. It is nice to see the way these pachyderms are taken care of. And it certainly looks like it is the "rut" season for these gentle giants. For those who know to read the signs, there were enough of them to realise that. We saw the young ones and the old ones, the oldest being Padmanabhan bull elephant and Gajarani Lakshmi among the cow elephants. There was one who looked similar to the famous "Gajarajan Kesavan" and was named Keshavan. But the locals did not regard him as the same. I asked one of them, and he told "Ah! That great one was blessed by the Lord". Such is the regard for Gajarajan Kesavan. His statue stands in front of the Administrator's office in Guruvayur. A tall and imposing one that.

We returned to Guruvayur and did some shopping. Things are pretty cheap around here, but don't expect them to last as well. I was surprised to see many shops selling "Made in China" stuff compared to local stuff. That was a sad realisation.

We did not manage to get prasadam in the morning. So, I made a last attempt for that. Went to room, changed to traditional attire and went back to the temple by the rear entrance. I was able to directly access the prasadam counters, and collect the Paal Payasam which was the prasadam for the day. While returning from the prasadam counter, I decided to go in pradakshanam direction. When I reached the dwaja-sthambam, I found that the last batch of people were being let in before the temple closed for the afternoon. I stood along with them and got third time lucky. Fully satisfied with the Lord's darshan, I walked back to our room. I had lunch and went to sleep for some 30 minutes.

We left Guruvayur at about 3:40PM and arrived at Thrissur at 4:45PM. We were under the impression that we can stove away our luggage in the cloak room and go for a darshan at Vadakkumnathar Temple. We had not locked our bags because they only contained food or clothes. The cloak room officer would not take our bags without locks as a matter of policy. Either I could lock the bags and give them to the cloak room or I could take them with me - which was a near impossibility. Next, the officer informed us that we cannot go to the temple in the attire that we were in (I was in Jeans and T shirt, Wife was wearing Salwar Kameez). With no feasible option to change attire, we dropped the idea of going to the temple. This would have to wait for another trip down to Guruvayur.

We boarded the train back to Bangalore (2683 Bangalore Express). We had a somewhat uncomfortable journey back home as the seats in Sleeping class are narrower than the 3rd AC ones. We reached K R Puram at 4:00AM and reached home at 4:15AM. After some small work, we went to bed again at 5AM. The fatigue of the journey was showing up only then. It took almost a day to get back to normal energy levels.

Gauri loved the train journey as it was her first. She loved watching the elephants at the sanctuary. Overall, I think she enjoyed as well.

I will be uploading the pics to Picasaweb and provide a link to the albums here as an update. Come back for this one.

Adios!