Trip to Divya Desams in and around Trichy

With my beloved Sriman Naryanan’s blessing, we plan to visit the six Divya desams in and around Trichy. The main objective of writing this is to help devotees who plan to visit the Divya Desams in and around Trichy and how to go about visiting the Divya Desams in an order (based on proximity and to make it a round trip).  If one plans to visit all the six Divya desams in Trichy, they can start the trip early morning around 6AM, they can visit all the 5 Divya desams in the first half of the day and you can visit Sri Rangam in the second half of the day.

Quick introduction: My name is Sreenivasan. I live in Bangalore and my home town is Madurai. I have taken a week off from work in 2^nd week of April 2013 to visit my home town. My father proposed that let us go to Trichy to have the darshan (Sayvai) of the six Divya Desams on  Saturday (20th May 2013).

Divya Desam visit plan:  First, Triukkozhi (Uriayur Sri Komalavalli Nachiyar Kovil) -> Thirukkarambanoor (Uttamar Kovil) -> Thiruvellarai -> Thiru Anbil -> Thirupper Nagar (Koviladi – Appakudathan Kovil) -> Sri Rangam

We six of us (my parents, my two brothers and aunt) started from Madurai at 6:30 PM in Mahindra Scorpio with my brother’s friend driving the vehicle.  The distance between Madurai and Trichy is approximately 140 KM. We reached Trichy around 8 AM. The plan is to first visit Uriayur Sri Komalavalli Nachiyar temple (locally known as Nachiyaar kovil). We reached Triukkozhi (Uriayur) around 8:15 am and had the darshan of Sri Azhagiya Manavala Permual and Sri Komalavalli thayyar before 8:30 am. We are blessed to be on time to have the darshan because 8:30-9:30 is the puja time.







 



After visiting this Divya desam, I realized it is better to switched on the GPS and Google map to guide us to get the direction to next Divya desam because the places we are planning to visit is not familiar to the driver and we are not familiar with the route. Trust me, Google map is amazing, it was quite helpful and saved us lot of time (without stopping to enquire/locate the temple).

Next, we planned to visit the Thirukkarambanoor (Sri Uttamar Kovil), which is in the Trichy –Nammakkal road and it is 8km away from Uriayur Nacchiyaar Kovil. Uttamar Kovil is just 1 KM from the No.1 Toll Gate in the Trichy-Chennai highway junction.  In Uttamar Kovil, we had a good darshan of Sri Purushothaman (Kedantha Thiru Koolam) and Thayyar. Uttamar Kovil is unique where we can get the blessings all MUM-moorthikal (Shiva, Vishu and Brahma). We enquired the devotees in the temple to get an idea to reach Thiruvallarai Divya desam. We had breakfast near the No.1 Toll Gate(there are some good Brahmins hotel there) and then head towards Thiruvellarai, which is 13Km from Uttamar Kovil in the Trichy-Nammakkal road. We need to travel in Trichy-Nammakkal road and take a deviation near Nochiyam and head towards Thiruvellarai. Thiruvellarai is a nice and quite village. It is  a big temple (30-40 mins needed) with the Sanctum Sanctorum in an elevated place. This temple is built by Shibi chakravarthi. We had very good darshan of Sri Pundarikashan Perumal (Amartha Thriukoolam) and Thayyar. It was 11AM and we planned to cover Thiru Anbil and Koviladi (Appakudathan) before lunch time. From Thriuvallarai temple, Anbil is 31KM and we need to cross No.1 toll gate junction again and drive towards Lalgudi. From Lalgudi, Anbil village is 8KM. We reached Anbil around 11:45 AM. Anbil temple is known as Sri Sundaraja Permual (Kedantha Thiru Koolam) and Urchavar’s thiru namam is Sri Vadivazhagiya Nambi Perumal. The Temple was very quiet and the priest explained very well about the temple and the Urchavams. We had good drashan of Sri Sundaraja Perumal, Sri Sundaravalli Thayyar and Sri Vadivazhagiya Nambi.

The priest in the Anbil temple told us that Koviladi temple (Thirupper Nagar) is 13KM from Anbil on the other side of the river Cauvery and the temple typically closed around 12:30PM. He advised that we will not be reaching their on time for the darshan. So, we decided to go to Sri Rangam to have the darshan of Sri Ranganathan and then go to Koviladi (Thirupper Nagar). Sri Rangam is 21KM from Anbil village and it is a return journey back on the same road towards Sri Rangam.

We reached Sri Rangam and had lunch and head towards the Sri Rangam temple around 2PM. The temple was opened for darshan and we had the darshan of Sri Ranganathar and Thayyar. Thayyar sannadhi opened at 3PM. We had the first darshan of Thayyar and headed to Sri Appakudathan temple in Koviladi. From Sri Rangam, Koviladi is 25KM in a Kallanai road. We travelled along the banks of the river Cauvery. We crossed Kallanai dam and Koviladi is 5KM away from Kallanai dam. We reached Koviladi village and the temple is in the banks of the river Cauvery. Since it is a hot summer, no water in the river, otherwise I could imagine that place will be amazing with water in the river Cauvery. The temple was opened for evening darshan. We had a very nice darshan of Sri Appakudathan (Kedantha Thiru Koolam). There are some temple renovation works going on in the temple.

 All the six Divya desams are amazing and no words to explain how I felt after visiting the six Divya Desams. It was spiritually enriching and fulfilling trip with the blessings of Sriman Naryanan.
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Sriman Naryanan's devotees planning to visit the six Divya Desams in Trichy needs one full day to cover all the six Divya Desams. I hope the information shared in this blog is useful for anyone plans to visit the Divya desams in Trichy in Future.

I have created a route map to the Divya Desams in and around Trichy in google map. I hope it will be quite handy for people visiting the Divya Desams in Trichy.

View Map of Divya Desams in and around Trichy in a larger map