Special Mom’s blog

Few months back, a good friend suggested we climb up the hill in Sholingur. This was suggested when we were discussing about climbing the Tirupathi hills. She suggested Sholingur hills would be a good trial if we wanted to climb the seven hills of Tirupathi.

Fast forward today, we climbed two hills in Sholingur. The first on had 1305 steps and the second 406 steps. The first on is abode to Lord Yoga Lakshmi Narasimha and second one to Yoga Anjaneya.

The time it took us to climb up and down both hills was 4 hrs. There is a cable car option for the first one and people were surprised we were going to use the steps. Yes, we surprised many doing this feat and got blessings from the temple priests.

Okay, the major catch was, both the hills or the entire town is home to monkeys. Not one or two just hundreds and they literally live amongst the humans along with goats and dogs.

We saw multiple you tube videos about this trip to this small hill. In fact at 5 in the morning, my friend called me from Pittsburgh to warn about these monkeys and gave us suggestions as how we should handle ourselves!

When tourists like us land at these pilgrimage places, we are usually surrounded by local people who sell stuff and act as guides. Fortunately, we stumbled on to a lady called Manimegalai a mother of two who are ten and twelve. She carried our necessities for the trip, had a stick in a hand to handle to the monkeys amd guided up the hill. She did say our family was quick 😊! Of course we had done the Pittsburgh 5k! She definitely made our lives easier.

The trip can be reflected on multiple levels. We took a decision to visit a temple in India but we saw to it my boy participated in it and had a wholesome experience. Going by a cable car would have been just fun few minutes but the four hour walk was much more than that. He had his practice for the Special Olympics Long Distance Walk event, when we go back home.

My Grandmother had suggested we do a ritual at Anjaneya Temple 25 years back. The priest performed the same at this temple without even asking us. Yes, we felt happy 😃!

The past month involved me reading Sundarakandam from Ramayanam for a whole month. I really wanted the effect of Hanuman to sink in before I left for the trip.

It was a great spiritual and religious experience!

Sholingur is nearly 120kms from Chennai. It took us 3 and half hours drive to the temple. The stay there was 4 hours and we came back home during Monday rush hour time. An A plus for my boy for being patient. Oh, we are still failing with our sleep. Hopefully we would catch up on it soon.