I was blessed to go to Parvatha Malai last week to worship Lord Shiva, where I had an interesting and thrilling experience. On the way to Parvatha Malai, we went to couple of other spiritual places which were Thiruvannamalai temple and Thirumukkoodal Appan Venkatesa Perumal Temple in Kanchipuram District, which has a great history behind it.
For the first time in my lifetime, I followed one week of strict fasting with rules and regulations such as offering prayers, wearing the "maalai", etc., and I didn't think it'd be easy for me. I completely enjoyed during the fasting period of seven days and I had good and positive feelings during that time. I was accompanied by few of my good old friends, who helped me to climb the toughest mountain. We started from Chennai in the morning and reached the base of Parvatha Malai in the late evening and we visited other temples on the way.
Parvatha Malai doesn't have proper road / steps or any other mode of transportation to climb the mountain like other mountain-based temples such as Sabarimala, Tirupati, Palani, etc. For 1.8 kms, there is a concrete steps, after that we should walk through uneven rock-made steps for another 1.7 kms. Then comes a real trekking experience where we have to climb without proper steps. On both the sides, there will be iron rods placed and there will be a tiny hole where you can keep your leg and hand on iron rod to balance, interesting part is that there is no electricity and hence we need to carry torch light with us :). Since it was night, there was no feeling of the fear of the height or the tough climbing condition, and somehow we managed to climb. If it had been day time, and if I were to see the steepness and the difficult condition of the climbing, then it would have been doubtful of whether I would have climbed at all !!
