Monday, August 04, 2008

India Visit

Yes, we finished the 31/2 week visit to India and roamed all over south India, criss crossing Chennai and Trichy few times.

This time, its not only joyous occasion, also had tasted all other rasams on our way as various things happened in last 3 years.

As promised, before doing any personal work except in-laws function, visited Srivari Venkatachalapathy on Guru Poornima. Even in the most crowded darshan of moolavar, where minutes before darshan, have personally erupted on those non-human creatures who forcibly moved in - Deepti's "Chitthapa, nasukaraanga" still rings in my ears - all of those vanished the moment entered the garuda mandapam, they didn't allow me till artha mandapam, still had some snappy moments of darshan that will be in me till I see HIM next.

As you all know, how lazy I am, didn't get to finish my personal promises, the only one I did was the tooth surgery/plaster what ever its called and yes this time also I lost the implant exactly at terminal 4 of heathrow. Think there is a jinx with london customs and my tooth implant. Next time I am sure to get a spare and courier it. Am not sure how long I need to wait for this. we will see.

Starting here, as always, had to repack some at Miami, and this time being the first travel for Bhishak, he tried some crying for first 2 hours then he realized that nothing will change - so he started playing with toys and calmed out on his own. Once we reached chennai, Deepti and NLN were waiting out, nice to see someone waiting after a long travel.

After a brief nap, we went out to see our new branch twig Niranjan, very smart small doll. We celebrated Deepti's birth star day.

Purchased dress for in-laws and started to trichy. After function is done, stopped at Perambalur, couldn't show the no 2 vivekananda st to Bhishak and Anu.

Then Bhishak's ear piercing and second round of ayush homam has been done in a very homely way with most invitees blessings. We took off from there to Tirupathi/Tirumala. Parked car on the foot hills, arranged a driver and we walked/climbed seven hills by foot - took 61/2 hours for 7 kms and the climbing of 1400 steps from ground level. It's all in night and we reached 6 in the morning at Tirumala.

After darshan, traced back to Chennai, had the samaradhanai, rested a day, started again for Bangalore, Trichy and back to Chennai and finally here we are.

Again from Chennai to Miami - BA gentleman changed flights in such a complicated way that we will fly chennai to london to houston to fort lauderdale and our luggages via washington. What he forgot is that all luggages needs to go through customs. It took a sweet 2 hours to checkin in chennai. We landed an hour earlier in London, but the BA personnel again showed thumbs down - we continued the horrible extra travel and here we arrived at 11ish in night. Thanks to our friends, who came down to drop us at home.

Here are the first set of snaps, some are on chennai and some in Trichy. Will collate all and add here soon.

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