Trip to Hyderabad

It was our first trip as family in 3 years after we cancelled our plans for Tadoba Tiger reserve on early 2020 due to the Covid.

Highlights of the trip:
Shatabdi train journeys to and fro from Pune. (Thanks, irctc for re-introducing this service, at last just now after withdrawing this route during Covid. Better late than never) !
Rishabh (son) appreciates everything generally in life and he (and we too), enjoyed the journey, which offered for viewing a lot of fields and majestic windmills and sightings of cranes on the fields!
Visited Sri Ramanujacharya statue. Another highlight. The statue is good watch from a distance as soon as you enter and also when you walk right under it as part of the walking tour. (It's the world's second biggest sitting statue, after that of Buddha in one of the eastern countries). Good for Bhakthi also, as it has a replica of all the 108 Vaishnavite Divya desams with a priest in each of them doing the archanais and the other rituals. And the laddu prasadam was good too!
Visited Chilkur Balaji temple. Nice Balaji temple, supposed to have initiated by Lord Balaji himself appearing in the dream of one of his devotees who was sad that he could not make it to Tirupati due to some reasons. The deity was not the regular one of Venkatachalapathy, though this is also in a standing form, but looked different. We are allowed to see from a distance. We did 11 rounds around the God and made our wishes. When they come true, you come back and make 108 rounds. Many devotees were doing rounds with a 108-count card ticking once every round. Me, son and wife made our wishes, which wife told we should not disclose out. Convenient for everyone, though son had just disclosed the wish he made.
Wife forgot the purse at one of the stalls outside the temple. Promptly was returned when she went back to the shop after a basic verification by the shopkeeper.
Another good part was visiting wife's cousin's family. Their 2-year-old was initially a bit unsure about us, started smiling when we gave our gift, even came to wife on promise of showing an up-down slide and finally said bye and gave flying-kiss all crying when she realized that we were leaving!

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