Back from Sabrimala

Okay so I'm finally back from Sabrimala (Lord Ayyappa's temple), looking much tidy after the shave ( no haircut till now, but I will hopefully get one soon). It was quite a trip. We started on Monday afternoon and reached Sujit's place in Kollam in the evening, had dinner there, did Puja and left for Sabrimala in the night. The jeep ride was a bit scary, as the driver drove very fast, we were at high altitude and the elephants liked to play football with vehicles (yes the elephants do sometimes come and kick your car off the hill when you are going there, why ? Because they are elephants and they have nothing worthwhile to do, unlike us). We reached there at around 1am and took bath in the Pamba river. The water was not too cold and wasn't too deep. We started to climb the hill after that. The climb was really exhausting. We had to climb around 3Km with a very severe incline (and on top of that I had to take care of the Mund, which kept on slipping). We reached the temple at around 3:30am. The temple was to open in another half an hour.
The temple has been built on a raised platform. It is said that, it was once surrounded by a trench to prevent wild animals from coming inside the temple. There are exactly eighteen steps to the temple and each step is made up of pure gold. (The temple itself is made up of gold) These eighteen steps are considered very sacred.
The scene when the temple opened was worth witnessing. A horde of people come charging towards the steps with coconuts in their hands. As soon as they reach near it they start smashing the coconuts on the walls over the top of other people (surprisingly no one gets hurt). Then they go up to the temple.
We were fortunate enough to get Darshan and left back home with lots of paysam.

All that was very nice, but I haven't studied a bit for the exam and I wasted today also. I hope the gods help me ;-)