Chilkur Balaji Temple, Hyderabad

In one of my regular visits to Hyderabad, I made it a point to visit Chilkur Balaji temple as many speaks about it and also there exists a belief that those who can’t make it to Tirupati – Thirumala Venkateshwara Temple can visit to this temple and get blessings of lord Venkateshwara. The temple is also popular as VISA Balaji temple as many devotees after visiting this temple have got VISA to their dream destinations!

Main entrance of the temple

The temple situated at Chilkur can be reached easily through public transport as many buses operate from Mehdipatnam to Chilkur. Temple is at a few minutes walking distance from Chilkur bus stand. May be with the modernization and lot of people visiting here, many shops and vendors are seen surrounding temple luring you to keep your foot wear if you purchase coconut and flowers from them and many even come near bus stop to make a business deal!

side entrance through which the devotees are allowed inside

Once you enter the temple from the side entrance(as the main gate in front of shrine is closed) you will find the counters to deposit mobile phones and camera as they are not allowed inside temple premises. Bags, mobile phones and camera are not allowed inside the temple and can be kept at deposit counters at a charge of Rs. 5, but the process is not well maintained as the same counter is used for depositing and taking back the things.

inside the temple premises, Queue to wait if the visitors are more and deposit counter on left side

There is no special VIP entry or special darshan so everyone should to go through the same way and without much wasting time one can reach near to shrine. The sanctum is having Lord Balaji along with Sridevi and Bhoodevi. One can’t make out the actual shape of idol as it will be covered with many layers of flowers. Devotees will be making pradakshina or avartana or going round around the sanctum praying lord to fulfill their wishes. There is a belief that all wishes will come true if anyone does pradakshina at this temple as offerings in the form of money is not allowed.

Those who have wishes to come true have to pray Lord Balaji and do eleven pradakshinas around the shrine. Once the devotee’s wishes come true they have to visit this temple again and do 108 pradakshinas around the temple. Also, there is a board that one should not close their eyes while seeing the lord idol. The cards having numbers from 1 to 108 numbers will be available at the temple premises free of cost, one can make use of these cards to keep count of pradakshinas made. (Even the card having numbers from 1 to 108 will be printed and distributed freely by the devotees as few think that it will bring good luck!)

card used to keep count of 108 pradakshinas freely available in the temple premises

Once the pradakshinas are made one can go out by the side exit, next to that there is a Shiva temple under the Banyan tree. Many devotees suggest that one should visit Shiva after visiting Balaji temple to get their wishes come true. I could see devotees of all age groups here.

The exit path is congested with full of shops one need to pass through. It would have been much better if the temple management takes care about the cleanliness of temple surroundings. On the way back to Mehdipatnam one can visit Mrugavani National Park.

Happy New Year 2014

Year 2013 was a year of happenings personally and professionally even though I could not blog much often due to demands at the work place and commitments. Most important of all was that I completed my Post – Graduate degree (M. Tech.) with distinction and got registered for Ph. D. program in one of the reputed institution of South India joining as Junior Research Fellow.

Year 2013 was also a year of tensions as I was assigned with project work which was significantly considered to be toughest kind of theoretical computer science. With much of turmoil and managing stress as my project work was connected to the PhD work of my immediate boss. Somehow I sustained completing woks within deadlines and getting out of Hyderabad as planned. Hopefully I was successful. Another good thing was the paper I presented at the International Conference got the best paper award and I could communicate one paper (kind of research paper with new approach) to an indexed journal and waiting for response!

Year 2013 was a dreadful year for my blog post counts as I couldn’t do much with the demands of personal and professional life even though I could write a few posts. Hope to write about the new place soon. Also, the year had good number of visitors to my blog compared to previous year. Every time the search engine giant Google updated its search algorithms my blog has received more number of visitors so may be it is having some good and worthy content!

Hoping to acquire one more academic degree in few more years, the highest, one can acquire in his life time. Wish me good luck!

I wish you all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2014. Hope am not too late to wish!