Visited Chilkur Balaji Temple (Visa Temple)

Thanks to a holiday on May 1st, last weekend was an extended one. Due to soaring temperatures here in Hyderabad, most of my time was spent at home. However, on Sunday (May 3rd), I, along with my roomie, visited 'Chilkur Balaji Temple' on the outskirts of Hyderabad. The temple is dedicated to Sri Balaji Venkateshwara & is situated on the banks of Osmansagar at a distance of 25kms from Hyderabad. It is also famously known as 'Visa Temple'. People hold this temple in high regards. There is generally huge rush of devotees at this temple and chants of 'Govinda' fill the air.

We decided to go there early morning to beat some of the rush and hence woke up at 4:30AM. Phew..I don't remember when I woke up so early last time!!! At 5:30AM, we started from home to Mehandipattnam. Lot of state govt run buses are available from here to the temple. At 6:30AM, we boarded a state govt. AC bus. It took just 45 mins for the bus to reach the temple. Though quite a stretch of the road is being widened on the way, the bus ride was still smooth. On reaching there, we immediately went for the darshan. The whole place was well managed. There was no jumping the queue and the administrators made sure that each and every person follows the rules. Well afterall, everybody is equal in the house of the Almighty. It took us about 1 hr to complete darshan of the Lord. I was also impressed to know that the temple is a hundiless temple i.e you cannot make a donation to the temple by putting money in a designated box (called hundi).

Later on, we went to see Osmansagar. It is at a walkable distance from the temple. I had heard that Hyderabad gets its water supply from this water body..not sure though how true it is. Due to summers, the water had receded and lot of dead fish were seen lying on the shore. We didn't spent much time there and came back to bus stop to board a bus to Hyderabad. Surprisingly, the same AC bus in which we came to this place was waiting at the bus stop. We quickly hopped into the bus and started our journey back home.