Ahobilam.

It was amazing how we suddenly embarked upon such a wonderful trip. Rajanikant Mohan (he claims that he was born in the year when thalaivar’s first movie was released and inspired by thalaivar, his father named him after thalaivar), the ulagam suttrum vaaliban (for the non-Tams, the youth who roams around) was calling us to some trip for quite sometime. Four of us finally heeded to his invite and we planned to travel to a place called "Ahobilam", an important theerth sthal for the iyengars.

Legend has it that the Eastern Ghats is actually a long serpent with Tirumala forming the head of the serpent, Kalahasti, its mouth, Srisailam, the mid-part of its body and Ahobilam, its tail. All these places are in Andhra Pradesh. While Srisailam is a Shiva-kshethra, the rest are abodes of Lord Vishnu. In particular, Ahobilam is supposed to be the place where the Prahlada/Narasimha avatar episode occurred.

I am not going to explain a lot about the place, you can visit this site to know more about it. The temples are in a mountain that is not easily accessible. Some of these infact are temporary structures, not even fully constructed, understandable because of the terrain in which they are situated.

So, more than a month ago, five of us - Rajani, Ram, Ramki, Murali and myself hired a Qualis, travelled overnight and reached this place. It had been a long time since I went on such a trip with friends. The travel was such an interesting one.

Atleast one of us had to stay awake to ensure that the driver doesn’t dose off and this meant there had to be a conversation so that one of us remained awake.Finally, for most part, all of us, but one (Murali, of course), stayed awake. If you want to keep the guys interested, the obvious topic for the conversation would be, well…., girls.

So, both during the onward journey and the return journey, we kept ourselves engrossed discussing about girls from ISB, from each of the guys’ undergrad institutes, instances of ponnu pakkaraa ceremonies (the ceremony where the guy’s family visits the girl’s family before the match is decided) that some of us had gone through etc.

I didn’t feel like we were going on a pilgrimage, it was more of a pleasure trip There was one temple in Lower Ahobilam and at least nine other different temples (nava narasimhar) in the Upper Ahobilam most of which could be reached only by foot. The toughest part of the trek was when we went to a place called the Ugrasthambam.

This picture was actually taken from some 2000 feet below.To reach that place alone we had to trek for around 2 hours and in the final part of the trek, there was just a narrow stretch of rock, only so wide for one person to climb, with drops as deep as 3000 feet on both the sides. Ugrasthambam itself (as can be seen in the picture) is on the tip of the rock which can hold a maximum of 4 people. It contains a steel pole and imprints of Narasimhar’s patham (foot) on a stone.

Reaching that place and seeing the vegetation below can give you an exhilarating experience and for all of us, this was the most difficult trek that we had ever done in our life.Another incident that I’ll never forget is when we trekked back to the main temple in Upper Ahobilam, we were very hungry. We had taken our breakfast at 9:30 am and it was already 6pm.

We went inside the temple and asked the pujari if we can get something to eat there before going to Lower Ahobilam. Another incident that I’ll never forget is when we trekked back to the main temple in Upper Ahobilam, we were very hungry.

We had taken our breakfast at 9:30 am and it was already 6pm. We went inside the temple and asked the pujari if we can get something to eat there before going to Lower Ahobilam.