Aug 04, 2014 12:53 AM
102504 Views
I had booked Tirupathi package from Hoysala travels for 27/07/2014. The whole week was kind of a holiday bcoz Tuesday was Ramzan and people had already planned for long vacation. Although I booked from hoysala travels, the package was arranged by APSTDC.
Fare: 1800+ 45(online booking charges of 2.5%)
Bus: single axle Mercedes
Departure: 9pm from shivananada circle
Back to Bangalore by 9pm next day.
Experience:
I would say it was a mixed experience, first of all, don't forget to take a print out of ticket bcoz that is necessary for you to enter into the temple. The departing point is not clear, they say yamunabai road shivananda circle, but I couldn't find it on maps(if you find it now then someone might have added) and rickshaw people also didn't knew about the location, but it is near to shivananda stores and should not be difficult to find as you will see A.P buses standing over there. The worst part is no amenities like water, blanket or anything would be provided in the bus and it was damn cold inside when I was traveling, there was one stop for dinner at kamat yatri nivas. We reached tirupathi by 3am and were given rooms to get fresh and left rooms by 4am to padmavathi temple, here we need to purchase ticket from our pocket 25rs by standing in comparatively small queue. After having darshna they took us to exchange point where we changed the bus which will actually go to the hill, here before getting into bus we were asked to have breakfast. Then after reaching tirumala hill, guide took some people who wanted to shave their head and came back on half an hour, APSTDC has good hold in temple and that's why they were able to get vip tickets for us, even then the darshna took 4hr as there was heavy rush on that day. The guide was good enough to speak 4 languages English, Hindi, kannada, Telugu. In bus I had got 3rd last seat and I could feel jerk when the bus got into potholes and that's the reason I didn't had pepper sleep.
