Thiruvannamalai.

Thiruvannamalai. Located 200kms from Bangalore, it’s a good weekend drive into spirituality and religion, if you are feeling like that. It is the place of the sacred Arunachaleswara temple – a temple where Lord Shiva is representative of the ‘Fire’ element.

The place is named after the great hill – Arunachala – which is considered Lord Shiva in his physical form. And the temple of Arunachaleswara is among the best architectures that you see in the South Indian temples – probably closer on the lines of Madurai, Sri Kalahasti etc ..

The temple is huge, occupies an area of about 25 acres with four large ‘Gopurams‘ on each side. The largest ‘Gopuram‘ is above the eastern entrance which is the main entrance. There are five ‘Prakaram‘ or corridors around the central structure with a high wall running on all four sides at the edge of the outer ‘Prakaram‘.

There are numerous shrines for other deities in the temple complex and Goddess Parvathi has a separate shrine on the third ‘Prakaram‘. She is worshipped as ‘Unnamulai Ambal’. The view of the temple from the Arunachala hill is a must-see.

The place was worshipped from a long time by various saints and was written about at length in the form of songs of paeans for the lord. But the place was made popular and known to the western world and so to the westernized (Confused!) Indians like us through the great Indian master Sri Ramana Maharshi.

While Ramana Maharshi himself never moved out of Thiruvanmalai throughout his life, the world came searching for him in the form of Paul Brunton - the great English spiritual traveler of his times. In his book "In Search of Secret India", Paul Brunton wrote in detail about various Yogis he met in India and described Ramana Maharshi and his path of simple self enquiry into ‘Who am I?’ in detail.

So through the lengthy route of Paul Brunton –> Ramana Maharshi –> Thiruvannamalai, we came to know of this place and by chance realized that it is a place pretty close to Bangalore. So do a whole lot of Europeans that you see around in the place. So much so that most of them live here for 6 months + even buying houses and bikes.

Ramana Maharshi used to say that ‘Giri Valam’ or Giri Pradakshina of Arunachala is very powerful form of meditation. To do Giri Pradakshina on a full moon day is supposed to give a whole lot of spiritual and physical benefits. Having read so much about it, to walk the 17+ kms stretch around the Arunachala hill was the objective of our trip this time.

Bare-footed and willing to challenge ourselves physically, Paddu, me and Ramesh started driving to Arunachalam on the morning of Good Friday, 21st of March 2008 around 830AM. Driving towards Krishnagiri from Bangalore, we could not stop appreciating the changing face of India as shown on its new highways and the slick Petrol Stations to the side, with all facilities to allow for a great stop-over.

"Wenn man seine wahre Natur im Herzen verwirklicht, ist das Sein-Bewusstsein-
Seligkeit in Fülle, ohne Anfang und ohne Ende."
(Ramana Maharshi)