Visit to Sri Mallikarjuna Swamy temple (Srisailam)

Planning to visit Sri Mallikarjuna Swamy temple also known as Srisailam, here’s my recommendation for your trip. I was planning to visit the temple and looked around for relevant info but unable to get some really helpful one which provoked me to share my experience and help others if they plan to visit the temple.

If you are planning to visit Srisailam from Bangalore here are various options you can explore:

By train:

Srisailam does not have a train station. The nearest ones are:

• Cumbum (CBM) 60 km away from Srisailam
• Tarlupadu (TLU) 59 km away from Srisailam

BY FLIGHT

There are no regular flights from other major cities of the country to Srisailam. Nearest airport is Begumpet Airport.

• Srisailam 156 km away from begumpet airport (HYD), hyderabad, andhra pradesh
• Srisailam 199 km away from vijayawada airport (VGA), vijayawada, andhra Pradesh

As I am crazy for long drives, I decided on driving option and picked up my cute, small Hyundai EON the smallest option from Hyundai. I had to travel from Bangalore which is almost 530km away from Srisailam and can be reached via three routes viz; via NH7, via SH56 and combination of NH7 & SH5. The fastest route is NH7, so I picked that and hit the road which goes via Bangalore Airport towards Hyderabad.

Journey begins:

I along with my wife, mom, daughter and two kids of my bro started at 5:30AM from Bangalore. It was equally dark as midnight.  I keep travelling to HYD by road, so I knew that roads should be good as the highway is new and roads are really well maintained. The initial 350Km was really smooth and you will cover that in no time. We reached Kurnool via Anantpur in almost 4.5Hrs. Srisailam is now 180km from here and as expected this 180km took relatively longer time. It took us almost 3.5Hrs to cover that 180Km as the roads are curvy, go thru the forest and be ready to watch out cute monkeys on the way. We were not lucky enough to explore any other wild animals, though I heard from friends that there are deers and few other species as well.

In 8hrs we reached the temple premises.

I booked the rooms and darshan online beforehand, which helped me to a certain extent and saved me some time & energy. There’s an informative website http://srisailamonline.com/ which enables you to book rooms, dasrshans and various poojas online. Don’t forget to utilize this. I booked rooms and poojas for myself using the same and it turned out to be good and saves you time.

Accomodation

It was a hit and trial for me, as I am not at all aware about the various accommodation options or varied poojas and dasrshans. Now when I have been there, I can surely help you in deciding the same. For accommodation, Mallikarjuna sadan along with Ganga sadan and Gouri sadan are good and easily accessible on the road. I booked Chandeeshwara Sadanam and that came out to be decent though approach is trickier as it’s slightly inside and you need to search a bit. On top of it, the ticket issuer mentioned it as C. Sadanam and nobody knew what’s C Sadanam. Finally one guy guessed that its Chandeeshawara Sadanam so he guided us. Reached the room, which was OK (not so great) and comfortable.

Please remember two basic rules of accommodation:

• Folks who booked accommodation through online should submit the printed copy in central reception office at the time of arrival. All Rooms will be allotted at Central Reception Office which is located at Ganga sadan only.
• The check-in and check-out time for online booking of accommodation is 8.00 AM to 8.00 AM. The advance amount deposited at the reception counter at the time of check-in time shall be collected on the next day well before 8.00 AM of check-out time.

Darshans & Poojas:

If you go under Poojas and Darshan option on the website (srisailamonline.com) there are multiple options which will only confuse you. Before explaining these poojas let me give a small brief on the temple. The temple comprises of multiple shivalingams including the jyotirlingam (Sri Mallikarjuna Swamy). These multiple shivalingams are within temple premises without any queue.

Let’s come to various Pooja and Darshan booking options. You will see too many options under Poojas and Darshan on the website. All these are for those multiple lingams that are there in the temple but not to main Jyotirlingam. For Jyotirlingam, you need to book abhishekam which is worth 1500/- else poojaris/godmen will not allow you to Abhishek.

Avoid booking Ati sheegra darshan online, as online options asks you to buy it for 200/- which you can buy for 50/- and 100/- within the temple.

I booked “Abhishekam at Sri Vurdha Mallikarjuna Swamy” which is worth 200/- and is a good deal as it allows entry to 2 adults (+kids) along with abhishekam at one of the multiple shivalingams.

Footfalls and time

I visited the temple on weekday, which I assume helped and it hardly took an hour from entry gate to exit gate. I reached in the evening, so I did one darshan in evening itself by buying Rs. 100/- ticket within the temple and one darshan in the morning via online ticket.

I was blessed that I got enough time to bow my head, touch the jyotirlingam and the feeling cant be explained. 

Places to see around

There are three main attractions around the temple; (i) Cable car / ropeway which was under maintenance when i visited. It's cheap and i guess the ticket costs you around Rs50/- for an adult. It takes you to Pathalganaga which is holy water lake, where you can go and have a dip if you like. I personally avoided this.

(ii) Srisailam Dam. Here's the pic for your reference. If you have kids with you then it will not be a bad idea to show them the dam and explain the science. :)

(iii) Zoo: this is slightly far off from the temple. I avoided this as well.

Srisailam to Hyderabad:

As my mom’s sister stays in Hyderabad and it’s pretty close to Srisailam so we thought of visiting them for a day. The journey was close to 225km and took around 4hrs.

Next day we started from Hyderabad around 9:30Am and were in Bangalore by 4:30PM which included few stops for tea and lunch break.

Finally we ended up with close to 1400km in 4 day trip in my small car and trust me it was not tiring at all. Thanks to NHAI for giving us such lovely and smooth international stature road experience.

In case you need more info, please leave your queries in the comment section.