Date: 2nd August 2009
Call it a son’s unfulfilled wish to take his mother to some well known and some lesser known temples in and around Kollam or his own desire to see some of these temples I may never be able to tell but I was very happy that I was able to take my mother to these all places of worship.
So on an early Sunday morning on the second day of the August month we started at around 7:15 am from Karunagapally. First temple we visited was Panmana Subramaniaswamy Temple. It is situated 6 kms from Karunagapally. It is a pretty old temple and the lord’s consort viz, peacock is also present here. In fact we could see two peahens and two peacocks altogether. We had taken 15 minutes to reach here from Karunagapally. Next was Vettom Sivan Temple which we reached by 7:45 a.m. This temple is two kilometres from Panmana Subramaniaswamy Temple. There was some construction work going on. Next was Kottunkulangara Bhagawathy Temple which is 2 kms more from Vettom Siva Temple. We reached there by 8:05 am. Kottunkulangara Bhagawathy temple is a ‘swayambhu’ temple.
Next halt was opposite the Puthenthura beach, viz Parimala Siva Kshetram at 8:44 am. We reached Anandavalleshwaram temple where we have Siva and Parvathy as the presiding deities at around 9:06 am. Next was Kotarakulam Ganapathy Temple followed by Amachiveedu temple which we reached by 9:15 am. Here still today animal sacrifice is prevalent. One of the oldest temples that we visited was the Rameswaram Temple. There are quite a few modifications done here to this antique temple. Last of the shrines was the Thirumullavaram Shiv Vishnu Kshetram. This place is commonly used to perform last rites. The beach is not bad though. Nice setting for some lovely snaps and we returned to Karunagapally by 12 pm.
That was only half the spiritual trip. In the second half of this spiritual trip, Mr. Krishnan joined us along with his family consisting of wife and two children. The cab had come at around 4:30 pm itself but it was around 5:10 pm when we did get into the cab. We reached Haripad Subramaniaswamy temple at around 5:50 pm after covering 29 kms. Temple is pretty old and it also has an enclosure housing two peacocks. We left Haripad for Manarshaala. It was four minute drive till Manarshaala. Only Brahmins are allowed inside the sanctum. Nagaraja and his better half are the presiding deities over here. The place is so full of dense out growth that one wonders that such a place is still there in existence. We then went to Ochira. Here there is no presiding deity. It is Para Brahma. Ochira Kalli is very famous. We reached our temporary residence by 9 pm.
