Believe me when I say that I have never seen so many temples in onesingle place – in the 17kms stretch there are not less than 40+ temples ofvarious gods and goddesses and even the great Rishis – there were templesdedicated to Agasthya and Durvasa also. Apart from this, are the innumerable‘penance centers’ or meditation places of great sadhus. The density ofspiritual souls per kilometer is extremely high and impossible to miss from theawesome serenity of the place inspite of the crowd. There are many peoplewalking around the path at any point in time. We started visiting temple aftertemple, walking through the stretch stopping and appreciating, overawed by thesheer number of those temples – God knows how old each one of them is.
The view of the great Arunachal hill throughout the walk is awesome. Yousee a mix of people doing the walk and a mix of places. Every view of the hillhas given self-realization to someone or the other. Every view of the hill issupposed to be good in its own way. For an unknown reason, just looking at thehill gave me a feeling of mystery and power. The walk and the place broke thebarriers of thought and belief as to who gets self-realization. What does a manwho has realized the self, look like? I have seen a lot of people on the GiriVanam path, who we usually associate mostly with superstition and weirdrituals, who actually sit down to meditate with a deep serene look on theirface. It might not be a weird thing but for people like me blinded bystereotyping, it is a revelation. I realized how much we have urbanizedthe concept of meditation and who should do meditation and how messed up ourbasics are.
You see people walking around the hill out of belief, out of hope, outof fun, out of curiosity, out of fear and every other human emotion weexperience every day. Laugh you may, when I say that the first thought whichcame to my mind when I saw those hordes of people is – can I make it faster toSelf-Realization than most of these people? And then I laughed at myconditioning of competition. Probably spiritualism is one place where all of uscan pass the test together and for a change, there are no grades.All of usas humanity should make it through; otherwise we are all equally a failure.
Anyway as one of the bloggers said, Giri Valam is a journey through life– “It houses the Sanyasa, it houses the escapist, it houses the Grihasta, ithouses the dead, it houses the Siddhas, it houses the Gods, it houses theanimals. A complete universe pulsating with every breath of yours as you walkdown trying to cover a 14 km stretch. It’s indeed a walk through life andbeyond… depending on what you want to see….”.Closing on the walk we went into the temple for darshan and came outfaster than we expected – by none other than the god’s grace. As towards theend of the 17kms walk, we were dead tired – unable to walk another step andsearch for a place for dinner. We went into a road side shack, had idlis withsambar for dinner and one chai to push them all through – pulled ourselves tothe ashram acco and crashed. But not before serving our tired feet with somehot water and liberal amount of ‘real’ Zandu balm.
Next day morning, we decided to dedicate the day to knowing more aboutthe saints of Arunachalam. So we visited Seshadri Swamigal temple, Sri RamanaAshram. After breakfast in yet another road side shack, with tasty pongal andawesome vada, we started our trek up the Arunachala hill – the sacred hillaround which we did pradakshina the day before. Our destinations –Skandashramam and Virupaksha cave, two caves where sri Ramana maharshi spentmost of his life before coming down the hill into the place, which is theashram today. A long trek up the hill and meeting curious set of piligrims, ourtrek was very eventful. We saw a lot of roaming sadhus and serene swamis. Oneof them was kind enough to engage us in a conversation – a Tax consultant inhis previous life before he left all, he gave us great information on RamanaMaharshi and how to search for realization. Unfortunately we could not talk tohim for long, but it was a really pleasant meeting.
Then we walked up to the two caves, meditated for a few minutes in eachof those caves and came down the hill – yearning for a next time, when we canspend more time in those caves. Before we left the place, we were checking outa few books on Ramana Maharshi in the Ashram bookstore. After that, lunch anddrive back were normal as they seem, but it was with a feeling of contentmentat challenging ourselves and somehow making it. A feeling of seeing amysterious place from up-close but still not really knowing it. An emotion ofpain, joy, contentment and a quest for more – it was a weekend of mixed feelingand our paining feet vouch for it.
