Tirumala Sri Venkateswara Temple

Deity

Sri Venkateswara (Balaji) on the seven hills, with Padmavathi at Tiruchanur

Where

Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh · 13.68N 79.35E

Usual hours

Darshan almost around the clock; Suprabhatam about 3 am — hours change with festivals and the season; check before travelling. Were these right when you went?

Grahas

Guru Sukran

Visited for

The busiest temple in the world, where a debt is repaid rather than a boon asked. Brahmotsavam in Purattasi and Vaikunta Ekadasi are its days; visited for marriage, for a vow and for prosperity.

The sthala purana has it that after a quarrel among the sages, Bhrigu struck Vishnu on the chest, and that Lakshmi, who lives there, left in anger and came down to earth. Vishnu followed and settled on this hill, living in an anthill and fed by a cowherd.

He is then said to have married Padmavathi, the daughter of the local king Akasaraja, and to have borrowed the money for the wedding from Kubera. The debt has not been settled, and the offerings dropped into the hundi are understood as instalments on it. That is why a visit to Tirumala is spoken of as repaying something rather than asking for something.

The hill is held to have belonged to Varaha before Srinivasa came, and by custom the Varaha Swamy shrine on the Swami Pushkarini is worshipped first.

Tirumala is one of the 108 Divya Desams and is sung by the Azhwars. By number of pilgrims it is the busiest temple in the world, and the establishment — the queue complexes, the tonsure halls, the accommodation, the laddu kitchen — is built to that scale.

The temple’s walls carry a long series of inscriptions recording grants from Pallava, Chola, Pandya and Vijayanagara rulers. Krishnadevaraya’s gifts are among the largest recorded, and statues of him and his queens stand near the entrance.

The Ananda Nilayam, the gold-plated vimana over the sanctum, is the first thing seen inside the walls.

Darshan itself is brief: the queue moves past the sanctum quickly and the moolavar is seen for a few seconds. The Vaikuntam queue complex outside is where most of the waiting is done.

The Swami Pushkarini tank, the Varaha Swamy temple on its bank, and the Kalyanakatta halls where heads are shaved are the other parts of a visit. The Alipiri and Srivari Mettu footpaths up the hill are walked by a large number of pilgrims as their vow.

The nine-day Brahmotsavam in the Kanya month is the great festival, and Garuda Seva is its largest evening.

Vaikunta Ekadasi, Rathasapthami — when the deity is taken out on seven different vahanams in one day — and Ugadi are the other heavy days. The temple is busy every weekend of the year.

Also called

Tirupati Balaji, Venkatachalapathi, Seven Hills

Reaching it

Tirumala is 22 km uphill from Tirupati by a ghat road, and on foot by the Alipiri steps, which take four to six hours. Tirupati has a railway station and an airport, and free buses run up the hill.

• Sri Padmavathi Ammavari Temple, Tiruchanur 13.3 km · Vaishnava
• Srikalahasti Temple 38.6 km · Saiva
• Thiruthani Subramanya Swamy Temple 62.3 km · Murugan
• Sholingur Yoga Narasimha Temple (Ghatikachalam) 62.7 km · Vaishnava
• Sri Varasiddhi Vinayaka Temple, Kanipakam 63.4 km · Ganapathi
• Vadaranyeswarar Temple, Thiruvalangadu 76.4 km · Saiva

Been to this temple? The things that change — whether the hours on this page were right, whether the sannidhi was open, how long the queue was on a Saturday — are exactly what no printed source keeps current, and what the next person travelling here needs.

• Were the hours right when you went?
• Is anything on this page wrong or out of date?
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