VKR Seniors' Tour - Day 3 (Monday, 1 Dec 2014)
Monday morning at 7 everyone was ready, in the real sense. Leela and Raja left a little earlier for Kutralam where there was facility to perform Raja's mother's Shradham.
It was announced that breakfast would be ready at 7. So in the true Brahmin tradition (for meals) we were there on the dot only to find the chef on a slow motion with his toothbrush. We searched a few more places. Apparently, the day breaks in that town only at 8. So we came back to our own hotel, waited for a while as we found them getting Idli ready. Raja and Leela joined us just in time with a welcome packet of hot Dal Vada and plain Vada. Apparently in Kutralam the row of houses on either side sold fresh snacks and filter coffee with spirited competition.
After breakfast we drove to Achan kovil - Ayyappa temple. Now we were in Kerala. The temple is on a hill, so we had to do some circuitous uphill driving. Most of us braced it. Leela's enthusiasm switched to a low key. We had a very good darshan - say exclusive. Since the temple is surrounded by dense forests and Western Ghats, we learn snakebite is a common occurrence. They bring victims to the temple, the pujari offers them water sanctified from puja, and they are healed. I didn't ask them what if the snakebite happens at night.
Then we drove to Aryan Kavu where the presiding deity is Ayyappa. I learn this is "one among the five most important temples dedicated to Lord Ayyappa in Kerala. Ayyappa is depicted here as a teenager (young boy). Ayyappa is known as Tiru Aryan and therefore the place got the name Aryankavu". Kavu is temple, as you all know.
From there we hurried to Kulathupuza where the deity is Bala Sastha, or Ayyappa as a child. We had lunch at a make-do restaurant that had sprung up specially for the Ayyappa Mandalam season (mid-Nov to mid-Jan). The guy says he bought the space for this period at auction for 2.20 lakhs. Initially we were skeptical, but the food was good except for the boiled rice they serve in Kerala as a rule.
The wait for an hour for the temple to reopen in the evening, relaxing in the surroundings of dense forests and hills, and an engaging Sthala Purana elaboration by the less busy owner of the hotel helped Leela overcome her nausea and enjoy the cool and fresh breeze. He said that herds of elephants were a regular feature. They come to the Kulathu puza (Kulathu river) in the precincts of the temple. Snakes. wild buffalos, bear, and occasionally leopards also show up. Offering rice to the fish in the river is a must. Ayyappa as a child stopped near this river, to play with fish, on his way to fetch the 'medicinal' tiger-milk for his foster mother, the queen. She feigned acute stomach ache and, in connivance, the attending royal physician prescribed tiger milk as a cure. All this in a bid to send Ayyappa to the forest never to come back, and ensure the crown to her own child that she had begotten then.
It was 5.30 in the evening and we drove to our next destination, the Parthasarathy temple in Aranmula. It was here that we had to slow down more than usual to make sure we were on right track. It is a beautifully structured temple built around 30 steps above the ground. From this place we hurried to the Devi temple in Chenganur just in case we were lucky to have darshan. We missed it by a few minutes. But that didn't matter, for we were to stay there for the night. So there was always the morning darshan. We had to forgo dinner from the hotel of our choice apprehensive of one-hour wait, so settled down for the next available, and booked ourselves in a hotel for the night. The highlight of that was Santosh, the room boy from Orissa, who was so helpful.
(Day 4 and final, to be continued)
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