The next day, our plan was to visit the spiritual side of Madurai. Our auto driver came in at 6:30 AM and rode us to the Kalzhalagar temple away from the Madurai city. The temple stands majestically in a fort like structure. We are first greeted by the Karupannasamy temple. The door and few steps leading to the door of Karupannasamy's sanctum is worshipped as he comes out and gives darshan only once a year. His sanctum compound has his huge Aruval. Walking past this, we see the temple pond with many steps. Next, we enter the Kalzhalagar temple.
The gopuram is intricately done, we walk through the corridor to reach the inner sanctum. The inner most sanctum was covered for pooja at that time. So we sat down along with other sabarimala devotees who had come for Kalzhalagar's darshan. He is called the Kalzhalagar Kalyanaperumal. It was closed when we went as pooja was in place inside. Once its was over, they opened up the barricades for the devotees to get the darshan of the Perumal. We got to see the Lord in his full glory. The temple infrastructure in this sanctum was all stone carved and fine ones with minute detailing.
Next we move on to the Goddess Sundaravalli Thayaar. The turmeric prasadam given here is believed to be special. We had a satisfied darshan here too. After we came out of the temple we walked to the counter that will give tickets to ride the bus to Pazhamudhircholai. Its Rs.10 per head and the bus leaves with enough crowd only.
அண்டமாய் அவனியாகி அறியொணாப் பொருளதாகி
தொண்டர்கள் குருவுமாகி துகள்அறு தெய்வமாகி
எண்திசை போற்றநின்று எனனருள் ஈசனான
தின்திறன் சரவணத்தான் தினமும் என் சிரசைக் காக்க!
In Pazhamudhircholai, Lord Murugar's sanctum was closed for abhishekam. We bought Rs.500 ticket, for a family and waited for the curtains to go down. Once the darshan started we were led to sit close to the Lord Solaimalai Murugan, and were blessed with a darshan we could not forget lifelong. This is one of the Arupadai veedu where the famous incident of Murugar giving fruit to Avvaiyaar happened. We were also given pongal prasadam in the temple, which had to be safe guarded from the monkeys of the hill. Same wait for the bus was required to come down the hill and reach Azhagar kovil from were we left. Private vehicles are allowed but devotees who come in public transport will have to take the temple bus only - to and fro.
We headed straight to our hotel from here for our breakfast and went to MeenakshiAmman temple right after.
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