I recently booked the KSTDC package to Tirupati from Bangalore. The one day trip starts from Badami house in Blore at 10:00 pm to reach Tirupati at 3:30 am, with a 30 minute stop in the outskirts of Blore. The Volvo bus left on time and was comfortable and well maintained.
In Tirupati, rooms are arranged at the Srinivasam complex to freshen up. Families are provided a room and single travellers share a room. This is a large facility run by TTD , which is adequate for the couple of hours of stayover. At 5:15 am the bus took us for breakfast at a nearby restaurant ’Balaji Residency’ , which served average quality food. I suggest you have a hearty breakfast expecting a long day ahead. After breakfast, we visited the ’Padmavati’ temple, where we experienced an an unusually large crowd, probably being a Friday. At around 8:00 am our bus took us to the AP bus stand at Alipri, where we were transferred to a APSRTC bus, which would take us upto Tirumala.
We reached Tirumala at about 9:00 am, and were asked to leave our footwear and other belongings at a designated shop. You are not allowed to carry mobile phones or anyother electronic devices into the temple and it is advisable not to carry your handbags into the temple. SInce we were a part of the package tour , our tickets were already purchased by KSTDC and we were permitted to directly join the special darshan queue, which was priced at Rs. 300. Please note the system for individual visitors is different, which first involves purchase of a ’Sudarshan’ token for Rs. 50 in any of TTD counters in Tirupati or Bangalore/chennai etc by providing fingerprint and photo. This token gives you the time for you to enter the queue at Tirumala to purchase the darshan tickets priced from Rs. 50 to Rs. 1000.
I understand from my co passengers that this process takes much longer and involves longer queues. Our group entered the special darshan queue at 10:00 am and we had our darshan of the lord by 11:15 am. SInce on that day there was ’relatively’ lesser crowd (if there is ever one), and despite the ’pushing and shoving’ we got to spend a good one hour inside the temple. After some shopping , our group left Tirumala at around 12:30 by the APSRTC bus. On reaching Tirupati we were transferred back to our KSTDC Volvo buses and we left Tirupati at 1:00 PM. On route to Bangalore we stopped over for lunch and reached Bangalore at 7:30 pm.
It was a well conducted tour by KSTDC, but I think the key here was the timing of the visit. Feb - April is relatively lean season in Tirupati due to the school/college exams and this was clearly visible. This would be an ideal time for the elderly and famliles with very young children to visit Tirupati. Thanks to the lord, the trip went off smoothly and I was able to have his darshan in peace.