Today I went with my family to have Darshan at the famous Thiruneermalai temple. The temple is dedicated to Lord Vishnu and is one of the 108 Vaishnava Divya Desam. To reach the temple is easy, it is just about 5-6KMs from Pallavaram (few more KMs from Chennai Airport). If you are coming from Chennai Airport towards Tambaram in GST road, just after the right to Pallavaram, you take the next right (below the new flyover) to Thiruneermalai Road. There are two temples here, one is on a small hilltop (Reclining Posture – Lord Ranganatha) and the other on the base of the hill (Standing Posture – Lord Rama). Compared to Sholingur and other hill temples climbing up this small hill is easy, just about 200-250 steps and took less than 10 minutes to climb up. The hilltop is shown in many Tamil films. Since it was working day and morning hours, there were hardly few other devotees, so we had a peaceful darshan.
The temple seems to have been renovated recently, steps were well done, paint fresh on the Gopurams. Fine job by the HRE Board of Govt. of Tamil Nadu and local municipality. As a common theme in many tourist places in Tamil Nadu (and across India), there were the locked Bathrooms. The local municipality has built on great cost a water tank & few Toilets in the foothill (near car parking) for public convenience but they were all locked, you need approach the temple staff for the key (who surprisingly obliged on our request).
Reference: Detailed information can be found in this fine blog post.
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for providing this useful information. I am also planning to take my aged parents to this temple and this information was very useful.
Thank you.
in that temple only has build on great cost a water tank & few Toilets in the foothill (near car parking) for public convenience.The local municipality to do nothing for the temple.In that temple they provide FREE MEALS to the seavaarthies daily at 12noon.
My mother is 88 years old. Would it be difficult for to climb the steps? If the steps are too high there could be problems for her. Please advise.
@Prema, Don’t worry. Thiruneermalai is easy to do. My father at 80 who can’t walk long distances did it relatively easily with help of one of us giving him support. She can take rest every 5 steps and still climb up in less than fifteen minutes