Oct 23, 2014 02:36 PM
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TRAVEL: We had gone through ITDC(SEABIRD travels) on Oct 17. Maintenance of the bus is not good, as it rained outside water started dripping on the seat, complaining to the maintenance guy on the bus said it because of the AC and they had reduced it, but it never stopped and after repeated complaints he asked me to go to a different seat.
HOTEL & FOOD: He had taken us to the hotel Grand at Tirupati which was decent but the food quality was not at all good.
Itinerary: We arrived at Tirupati at 2.30am and the guide took us to hotel grand, asked to get ready and to board the bus back at 3.45am. We started to Alamelu Mangapura Temple and he asked us to buy 25/- entry ticket on our own as it is not covered in the package, after visiting the temple we came back to the hotel had our breakfast( quality of the food was not good), after the breakfast, guide had arranged the APSRTC link coach to reach tirumala.
BALAJI DARSANAM: After getting down at tirumala around 7am he asked for the people who wanted to get their hair tonsured to come along with him and the rest to go to a specific shop to deposit all the electronic items as its not allowed inside the temple and from there his know person will take them to Varaha Swamy temple and every one will again reassemble near the ttdc shop in front of the temple.
We headed for hair tonsuring and the guide said he will arrange for a person and no need to go in queue. Got the hair tonsuring done( payed 50/- per person, no idea if it is the actual fare or not). He took us back near the ttdc shop where the rest of the people were assembled. It was a friday and the guide knew that the darasanam will be open only after 9.30am and it was still 7.30am, he took all of us near the 300rs entrance gate and asked us not to go anywhere.
We had to literally kill the time sitting at the gate entrance, he could have taken us for the nearby Hanuman temple and also for the Varaha swamy temple for people who had gone for hair tonsuring, this part was really very bad. He went to the ticket counter and bought tickets for everyone, we all entered in the same entry point where a person will enter the queue who has a 300 rs ticket, there was no difference and the guide said that the darasanam time will depend on the crowd the promise of 1-2 hours made by the travels had no meaning, luckily there was no crowd and we came out after the Lord Balaji darasanam in one hour.
Guide had collected laddus for the ticket and distributed them as per the tickets and also he had arranged for extra laddus at 50/- per laddu. This part was very comfortable as there was a lengthy queue to collect the laddus. There were people who had visited for the first time and the guide was not at all helpful when they asked on what else was there to visit when we were waiting for every one to come back from the main temple where again we waited for 30 minutes. He rudely answered that he was not a guide for only specific people. We all headed back to tirupati in the APSTRC link bus again to the hotel and had our lunch and headed back to bangalore.
IN MY OPINION BOOKING THE TICKETS FOR DARASANAM ONLINE AND VISITING LORD BALAJI IS FAR BETTER THAN GOING THROUGH PACKAGE AS I DIDN'T SEE ANY DIFFERENCE EXCEPT THAT I GOT THE LADDUS WITHOUT STANDING IN QUEUE WHICH WAS NOT MY MAIN INTENTION.