Guruvayur trip Feb 2015

Guruvayur

It’s  5^th February 2015  morning  and we are headed to Trichur by Ernad express from Mangalore.

In Mangalore we stayed in a hotel “Metro Plaza”  a mere 2 minute walk away from the station. The staff were extremely warm kind and helpful. To catch the Ernad express early in the morning we had to leave the hotel at 6.45 and being a diabetic I wondered what to eat when the manager v kindly packed some bread  ,butter and jam for us. Armed with these few slices of bread we boarded the train. Much to our disappointment   we found there was no pantry in the train but tea was available in every station. We literally stopped in every little village of Kerala and it was 3 pm by the time we reached Trichur, hungry and tired with just sitting. We rushed to the railway vegetarian refreshment room to eat.

From there ,  to the bus stand v near the railway station, to take a bus to Guruvayur.

On the train we met a group of people who gave us the number of Bramhana Samooham , East Nada,  phone number 0487-2553499 ( gbsamooham@bsnl.in ) to call and book a room. Call we did, and luckily we got an Ac room in Sankara Nilayam, run by Bramhana samooham.

This is very near the temple  literally 2 minutes away from the Temple. We checked in and after a bath went into the temple. Easily we joined the queue and went up the stairs and down the stairs to see  Lord Guruvayurappan. He had a chandana kappu like a AAlilali Krishnan, which was very cute as this alangaram is done on the standing Krishna idol , later we heard someone telling that these chandana kaappu is done almost daily by archakars on an inspiration, so it is never predictable.

We stayed till the night when we saw the Seeveli, on the elephant which went around three times and a small group singing rama rama krishna Krishna. 

We retired early and got up at 12 midnight to go in for the early morning Nirmalya Seva. As we stood in queue we saw about 300 people gather for this dharshan. We went in and saw the Lord without any embellishment his Chandana Kapu was being removed and it was a great feeling to stand there witnessing the removal of the alangaram. There after, we did a few pradakshinams and for the first time had breakfast of idli sambar coffee at 5 am in the morning and upon entering the room we slept until noon.

We had home made lunch at “Bramhana Samoohal” hall, East Nada, in front of Sankara Nilayam. To have this, we had to register our names around 8:00am.

We went to the station and took a train that left Guruvayur at 6pm. It was Rs 10  per person to Trichur, for a 30 minute ride. We had a long wait there and took our train at 10 in the night and arrived at Chennai at 6.30 on the 7^th morning.