The Trip to Ahobilam – Part 3

Its been really long since I wrote Part 2 of this thread. One of my friends is planning to visit temples in South India and might most probably visit Ahobilam. He wanted me to complete this thread ….. so here goes …..

(Please click here to access Part 1 and here to access Part 2 of this thread)
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After reaching Prahalada Padi, we visited the Yoga Narasimhar shrine.

Way from Prahalada Padi to the shrine

From top to bottom: The priest, Rajani, Murali and Ramki

The priest (archakar) performed ‘puja’ (archanai) and explained us the significance of the place. From here, we started the most difficult part of our climb – the trek to the top to reach the “Ugra Sthambam” which is believed to be the place with the iron pillar from where Lord Narasimha emerged. The trek upwards was really tough. As I was not aware of the trekking part, I was wearing slippers which made it all the more difficult for me. After climbing for a long time, we finally managed to reach the top.

This is Ramki sitting on one of the rocks at the top

To go to “Ugra Sthambam”, we had to pass through a narrow stretch of rocks which were slippery and had around 2 km drop on both sides. I decided to stay at the top and not proceed to “Ugra Sthambam”.

The climb down was really difficult. The rocks were very slippery and it was proving really difficult to get a firm foothold with slippers on. We reached Jwala Narasimhar shrine after spending a lot of time climbing down carefully. On the way, we saw a spot called “Rakta Kundam” which is where Lord Narasimha is believed to have killed the demon. Near this spot is a huge waterfall. Here are some more snaps taken on the way down ….

We finally reached the spot where we originally started from and went inside the main temple there to have darshan. We were feeling very hungry by that time after having spent all our energies trekking up and down. Murali happened to strike a conversation with a senior priest there. Don’t know if we told the priest that we were very hungry or he figured it out himself. I think it was the former. When he heard we had trekked up till the very top he was very happy and was kind enough to arrange some “prasadam” for us.

It was almost dark by the time we reached lower ahobilam. We just killed time for 3-4 hours while our driver slept in order to get ready to drive in the night. I think we left Ahobilam at around 10:30PM and reached ISB in the morning at about 6:30 or 7AM.

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Finally, I leave it to you to interpret the following two snaps and to appreciate the similarity in them (I think I am in for some real good bashing from KR tomorrow) ……