As I was reading an article on Andal and her devotion to Lord Ranganatha and how she was adamant in her desire to marry him. I tried recalling the idol at Srirangam which I was sure I had visited. Try as I might I could not recall the charismatic face of Ranganatha. This enthused me to plan a trip to Srirangam. When I put forth the idea in school the teachers emphasized that all the three shrines if visited between sunrise and sunset would lead to attainment of moksha.
Thus beagan a plan to visit Aadhi Ranga at Shrirangapatna, Madhya Ranga at Shivanasamudra and Anta Ranga at Srirangam.
Initially many teachers were enthusiastic but later some dropped out on hearing the cost of the trip ,some others felt they were just budding teenagers and the Divine had no place in their lives as yet,while yet others felt the responsibilities towards their family was such that they could
not take time off.Finally it turned out to be a group of nine. We hired a tempo traveler and set out on Saturday morning at 4.45.
We reached the temple at Shrirangapatna and waited for the temple doors to open. As soon as we went in we feasted our eyes on the majestic statue of the lord sleeping on the giant seven headed serpent nagashesha.We were lucky to be amongst the first few to get darshan on that day.
Later we headed out towards the Madhya Ranga which is a temple near the famous hydro electric project at Shivanasamudra.
The Madhya Ranga temple is one of the lesser known temple but the idol of Sri Ranganatha has a divine power of its own captivating the minds of the devotees.We reached there at 10.30 and then had darshan and left Madhya Ranga at 11. We had a good breakfast of Idli and Molhapudi, followed by some fruit and proceeded towards AntaRanga.
On the way we stopped at Salem and had a sumptuous meal and proceeded towards Moksha at Srirangam.
There was a big crowd at Srirangam and we decided to buy tickets so that we could have darshan faster. Then the darshan took us just 1/2 an hour and we then visited the Andal temple
The idol of Andal at Srirangam.
Lord Ranganatha.
Then we had some food and checked into a hotel and settled our tired bones for the night. Initially we had planned on getting up early and visiting the temple to attend the Vishwa roopa Darshan but were put off when we came to know that only 50 tickets would be sold for it. We then got ready by 6 in the morning and headed out towards the the other temples that we planned to visit. First we visited the river Cauvery at Amma Mantapa.
Then we drove to Thiruvanekavil. Here there is a Shiva Linga bathed by the Cauvery.
.
From there we proceeded to the famous Brihadeshwara temple at Tanjavur.
Brihadeeshwara
From Tanjore we hit the road to trichy. As I had some image of the wonderful shopping in trichy near Rockfort.
I dragged the whole entourage to the market of the yesteryears but sad to say the tiny wayside shops had given way to huge shops and there were no trinkets to be bought by the roadside. We quenched our disappointment with some paneer soda and headed to the last temple the Samayapuram mariamman temple on our route back to Bangalore.
We reached home at midnight and hit the bed to gear up for the next day at school.
