Tour to Tirupati

GOVINDA GO..........VINDA!!!

This is my travelogue for Tirupati Balaji. Everybody knows but still wants to reiterate the fact that the hardest part of Tirupati Balaji tour is ”Darshan”. I wanted to make life simpler for my beautiful(i need to tell her this word 10 times aday) wife and wonderful (100% mischievous) kid. So I opted for APTDC tour and the story begins:

We were told to report at 7:45 P.M. for a bus of 8 P.M. As always thanks to my hubby, we were right on time. Bus didn’t appear till 9 P.m. we were told all types of stories of bus malfunctioning, new bus coming and all that kind of crap. We got the bus at 9.15….whoops it was a non ac normal bus. I checked my ticket again I booked for Volvo AC...Something was very wrong.

We became witness of fighting in all possible languages Telugu, Hindi, English, Tamil etc….We were told that we have to travel in this bus only and while returning we will be provided a Volvo. I was thinking of cancellation of tour as our seats were 35-36 and it would be very difficult to travel in the bus provided. We saw some people canceling the tickets…They were right in their sense…we were not told earlier about the bus, bus was already late by 2 hours and Tirupati Darshan is not a joke it take good blend of patience , mental and physical strength.There some flow of sentiments …why to cancel a tour which started with name of Lord. I had no answer for wife's argument and we eventually agreed to travel. I played a smart game and got our seat numbers reshuffled for front seats. At last we departed for Tirupati chanting Govinda………… Go vinda with 21 seats in a bus of 36 seat capacity.

I got a spare seat and tried to sleep there and I slept with my kid. You must be thinking ok all miseries over and tour will reach Tirupati….wait there is a surprise packet. In broad daylight our bus driver forgot the route thrice can you believe this they sent a driver on tour that has never been to Tirupati before…... Great… keep it up APTDC.

We stopped at a normal bus depot with no good basic amenities. Bus driver told us there is no good restaurant nearby and voila…..after 10 minutes when we left that bus stand we got a good looking APTDC restaurant .We can’t blame the poor bus driver who was driving first time to Tirupati but certainly we can blame APTDC who didn’t train their drivers.

And then we reched to Tirupati and then no error , good food and good darshan…..really Govinda is govinda……..