Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts

Mar 3, 2010

Kumararama

Kumararama is one of the five Pancharama Kshetras that are sacred to the Hindu god Shiva. The temple is located in Samarlakota in the East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh in South India.

Lord Shiva is known as Kumara Bhimeswara Swamy here. The consort of Lord Kumara Bhimeswara Swamy is Bala Tripurasundari. According to legend, the Sivalinga at the temple place was installed and established by Lord Kumaraswamy. Maha Shivaratri, Karthika Masam and Sarannavarathri are the main festivals celebrated at the temple.

Ksheerarama

Ksheerarama is one of the Pancharama Kshetras which is located in Palakollu near Narsapuram in West Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh in South India. Lord Shiva is known as Ksheera Ramalingeswara Swamy here. The Sivalinga at this place is installed and established by Lord Vishnu.

Somarama

Somarama is one of the Pancharama Kshetras which is located in Ramachandrapuram Taluk in East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh in South India. Lord Shiva is known as Someswara Swamy here. The temple is situated on the bank of Godavari River. The consort of Lord Someswara is Sri Rajarajeswari Ammavaru. The Sivalinga at this place is installed and established by Lord Chandra. Maha Shivaratri and Sarannavarathri are the main festivals celebrated at this temple.

Draksharama

Draksharama is one of the Pancharama Kshetras in South India. It is located approximately 28km southwest of the city of Kakinada, in the East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh.

The Siva deity is known as Bhimesvara Swamy. The temple is situated on the eastern bank of Godavari River. The consort of Lord Bhimesvara is Manikyamba. According to local belief the Siva linga at the temple was installed and established by the god Surya. Maha Shivaratri, Devi Navaratrulu, Karthika Masam, and Dhanurmasam are the main festivals celebrated at this temple.

According to local legend, the temple was built by angels in one night. The construction of the perimeter wall could not be completed before sunrise and still stands incomplete. Several attempts have been made to construct the uncompleted part of the wall but all those efforts have failed with the constructed wall collapsing within a few months.

Amararama

Amararama is one of the Pancharama Kshetras which is located at Amaravati town near Guntur City in Andhra Pradesh in South India. Lord Shiva is known as Amareswara Swamy or Amaralingeswara Swamy here. The temple is situated on the southern bank of Krishna River. The consort of Lord Amareswara Swamy is Bala Chamundika. The Sivalinga at this place is installed and established by Lord Indra.

The Sivalinga here is very tall that the archakas mount a pedestal platform, and perform the daily rituals as well as Abhisheka. The top of the Linga has a red stain on it. It is said that Sivalinga was growing up in size and to stop its growth, a nail has been hit onto the top of the Sivalinga. When the nail dug into the Linga, blood started to ooze from the Sivalinga itseems. The stain can be see even today.

Pancharama Kshetras

The Pancharama Kshetras or the Pancharamas are five ancient Hindu temples of Lord Shiva situated in Andhra Pradesh. The Sivalingas at these temples are made from a single Sivalinga.
According to mythology, this Sivalinga was owned by the Rakshasa King Tarakasura. No one could win over him due to the power of this Sivalinga. Finally, Lord Kumaraswamy, son of Lord Shiva, broke the Sivalinga into five pieces and killed Tarakasura. The five pieces of Sivalinga fell at five different places on earth.
These five pieces were installed as Sivalingas at five different temples by Indra, Surya, Chandra, Vishnu and Kumaraswamy at the respective places. These places (or Aaramas) are as follows:

  1. Amararama (located in Amaravathi)

  2. Draksharama (located in Draksharamam)

  3. Somarama (located in Bhimavaram)

  4. Ksheerarama (located in Palakol)

  5. Kumararama (located in Samarlakota)

Feb 7, 2008

Water Falls again

This is my second article on water falls. (First one on Niagara Falls )This time the Talakona falls in the Nallamalai forest range in Chittor District of Andhra Pradesh. It was a wonderful experience :). The falls is located 76kms from Tirupathi.
Once we have crossed the villages on the way, we enter the forest and hill area in Nallamalai. It is one of the film shooting places.
On the way to Talakona
Then the place where the actual waterfall area starts is a lord Shiva temple. And here are the cottages of the AP tourism also.

At this place the waterfalls area starts and there is the forest department check point. And then after going for a kilometer inside we need to park the vehicles and start walking towards the falls. The area is filled with monkeys. There are so many of them that they start surrounding the vehicles to see if they can get anything to eat and surround the people to scratch anything in their hand. So we need to should not carry anything to avoid the monkey attack. Once you show them your empty hands they never bother to come to you.
Monkey on the railing
When we keep walking and climbing small but many steps (natural stone ones not the tiles) crossing the water flow, we come to the place where the water falls on the ground. The falls is actually on the rocks so we wont observe a direct fall as in Niagara.
Then from here we can climb up to one of the nearest point into the falls. But this time the steps are more narrow and more uneven. We need to take the rock support on one side and on the other side is the valley down. Though it has railing it is not a good support to rely on and walk.
It needs energy to climb up and then we get the falls. Beware here we need to walk barefoot for the rock floor is soo very slippery because of the continuous water flow. We did not remove them as we were not aware of it and went to a point near the drizzle. We did not go into the falls. I started holding the unreliable railing and looking down. I was then told not to do so as it was the edge point where one could easily slip and fall down into the flow.
There is a path further up onto the top of the hill but that was deadly narrower path. Then was climbed down the path.
On the return way to the forest area check point we find a Giant Climber. This is climber is 4 kms long and very old. It takes the support of other trees around which die in due course. So imagine how old this might have been.

Talakona is one of the best places where nature is at its best.
Need to take care of the following while going to this place:
1. Always go in a group as the entire path is lonely.
2. Beware of monkeys and try not to carry anything in hand.
3. Be careful not to go to the edges as the railing is not enough to support at some places.
4. Do not go with footwear near the falls.

Feb 5, 2008

New Place - New Experience

Heard of Golden Temple ? hmm.. yes.. Amritsar... hmmm... but now we have one more that is the Sripuram temple - South Indian Golden temple of Godess Lakshmi that is located at Tirumalaikodi around 8kms from Vellore of Tamil Nadu. The temple is very beautifully constructed.

The entire temple is in gold

The path to reach the temple is in the star shape of around 1.5 - 2 kms long. Preachings of Gita, Bible and Khuran have been written on display boards on either side of the path (Blue arrows path into the temple and pink path out of the temple)

There is water around the temple and in the night due to the lights, the temple reflection is seen in that water.


The temple was initiated by Narayani Amma, (31yrs old person) and constructed by seeking donations from people. The total area is around 100 acres and a cost of more than rupess 300 crores was spent. The estimate is around 600 crores once the entire project is completed. The temple was open for darshan in august 2007.

It is a very noble and wonderful gift to the mankind.
For more info check out :



Dec 12, 2007

Niagara Falls- a wonderful experience

I have been to the Niagara Falls from Toronto in August 2005 and it was a wonderful experience, one that i cannot forget for the rest of my life. I have been there along with my brother who came from US and we had a wonderful experience. I loved the falls and would love to visit it 'n' number of times. This gorgeous falls is also called as Horseshoe Falls. There will be a boat ride to go into the falls. It's The Maid of the Mist. And this will be a lovely feeling where we can feel the falls as if there are water droplets on us. The sound of the falls is soooo great... There is the Skylon Tower and the view from it will show the actual horseshoe shape of the waterfall. The falls is said to be more beautiful and visible from the Canada side than the US side. There is also an aerial view of the falls from a helicopter.




View from the top - there you can see the Maid of the Mist boat


View from the Maid of the Mist


Lost in the waterfalls




The bridge connecting US and Canada
this is one of the lifetime achievements that one can have :). In case you ever get to visit Canada or USA, do visit the falls.