M17-SRI ANANTHA PADMANABHASWAMY TEMPLE THE CONCLUSION 

By PragyanSharma Polavarapu

We had lot of shopping at the big bazaars on the  temple streets. We had a lot of work packaging our
samans. We came to hotel and took food and rested  and talked a lot on phone to our relatives at Hyderabad. Our plan was now to move to the sea side resort at Varkala to  celebrate  our daughter’s  birth day(in a simple way). I may specially add here  that only  because of initiative of our daughter and son-in-law we planned this hurried very long temple trip a month before and this temple trip proved a most wonderful and most holy trip .  Seeing so many great ancient temples lifted our souls.We fixed the dates of the long trip in such a way that we would visit Lord Anantha Padmanabha Swamy temple  before the birth day date. We were very happy and satisfied that we could implement our plan.

On the way we  saw many of Kerala’s famed  “backwaters”. They were  created by nature centuries back when cyclones and high tides pushed colossal quantities of water into low land near the sea .The water cannot recede and stays  permanently and creates  lagoons.The ground also gets filled with salt and becomes infertile permanently. It is said that long backwater canals exist parallel to the coast in some area of Kerala. Many towns and villages  exist beside them . Small steamers and boats ply in these back waters and they are tourist’s delight . We very much wanted to travel in one such salty backwater lake but our tight schedule did not permit. We had to follow our program to  reach airport in time the following day.

We reached the resort at about 2 pm .the hotel was a large  old world building perhaps of the colonial era. It had modern facilities ,vast halls and  sea view points  . The building is located on a thickly wooded hill slope. Everywhere there were hundreds of huge trees and and the high buildings on the hill slopes nearby were partially hidden by the hundreds of huge  trees. It looked from distance like a thick forest .One can sit for hours brooding and watching the nearby blue sea. After rest we went for a walk in the vast multi-level gardens of the resort . The garden roads were steep and were uilt at different levels at some places. We spent the evening calmly as  children played . Though the birthday fell on next day ,(i.e.  cutting birthday cake  at stroke of midnight 5-8-24/6-8-24 ), we slightly changed the program as the children were very tired .   We cut the cake at 10 pm on 5-8-24 and soon after the children were fast  asleep.

Next morning (6-8-24) we started for Thiruvanathapuram International Aairport at 8am from Varkala after breakfast . We again travelled through the same picturesque seaside village. The villages on the sea side are kilometers long  with beautiful little houses among millions of coconut trees. The road is close by the  sea coast. There were for kilometers endless row of closely built modern houses which looked new and well painted . In the back ground there are virtually millions of coconut trees and on the other side the endless sea with wild high waves with white foam. The sea was hardly ten or twenty meters away and just two meters below the  level of the village ground . In high tide time  sea waves can push huge quantities of water on to the land  and inundate the seaside road. But for us from Hyderabad city  1500 kilometers away it was a strange and  beautiful sight.
 We reached Trivandrum airport at about 11-00 hours passing  through  the modern district of high rise buildings .In a central high roofed hall there were most beautiful and quite dazzling murals showing the gods and other mythological characters. After making a final bow to Lord Anantha Padmanabha Swamy ,Lord of the universe ,we boarded the plane at about 11-30 hrs and reached  Mumbai airport   at about 3pm  . At Mumbai  at a  spacious  passenger terminal  near to airport, I  felt surprise and wonder  seeing ceiling fans with 10 or 15 feet long wings ! 
From Mumbai  in endless pouring rain we travelled to Pune in taxi . We started at about 7pm and reached Pune after a three hour journey at about 10 pm. It was the end of a most exciting  Temple Yatra.  
 

Soon after food and bidding goodbye to the hotel staff  we started  for Varkala ,40 kms beyond Trivandrum, at about 12-30 . We travelled on the seaside road  at a leisurely pace  through a typical sea side Kerala village.  It was like a long ribbon  kilometers long ,an endless row of small ground level concrete roofed houses or one storeyed buildings among thousands of coconut trees. It is easy to see that the people of the area adjusted to the seaside environment. The occupation of quite many may be  fishing.