Monday 16 May 2011

108 Divya Desam Temples

"Gopura Darshnam - Kodi Punniyam" , " Gopura Darshanam Papa Vimochanam" says the popular beliefs. The meaning is if one cannot visit the temple if they can worship the temple tower from afar their sins will be washed away and they will bestowed with millions of blessings.

This 108 Divya Desam Map is a collection of the satellite imagery of the temple towers as viewed from above. The placemarks includes links to key sites/ blogs providing information about the temple, as well as the pasuram numbers for the temple.

So you can commence your virtual yatra at your own leisure, chant the relevant 4000 for that temple and complete the circuit at your own free will. Such an arm chair travel is only meant to kindle your interest to visit more of them in person, more often than usual and links will have travel information amongst other things.

For those not within travelling distances - "Iruppidam Vaikuntam, Venkatam, Maliruncholai" so please have a nice Virtual Darshan.


View 108 Divya Desam / 108 Vaishnava Divya Desams Temples in a larger map

Open the 108 Divya Desam in a new tab and zoom in on the individual placemarks represented as different colour ballons to see the actual temple. Where ever possible links to 360 degree view sites or virtual tour sites have been included.

Please offer your comments suggestions and advice either on the comment section of the map or this blog.Blog Search

Ahobilam Nava Narasimhar Temples

Triplicane is my favourite temple and after the sannadhis one of my favourite spot there is the passage between Lord Parthasarathy sannidhi and Lord Narasimhar ( Telliya singar) sannidhi. Standing there one can worship feel the presence of both Lord Krishna and Lord Narasimha.

The inspiration for this map came from wikimapia where some enthusiast had marked the locations with a civilian gps to be accurate.

I decided to put a special user content map just for the nine narasimhar temple. I linked unique images from different blogs and as in the divya desam map provided interesting links for these temples.

This one has been a run away hit with almost touching 10,000 hits now.


View Ahobilam (Divya Desam / Nava Narasimhar Temple) in a larger map

As with other maps open link in a new tab or just click on the link above to zoom to individual temple. As you can see the high resolution pictures for this area is only partly available and best efforts has been made for accurate mapping. 

Please offer you feedback at the maps comment page or here at the blog to improve it further.blog-search

Sunday 15 May 2011

Navagraha Temples Kumbakonam surrounds

This map show the temples for the Navagrahas or the Nine Planets.www.blog-search


View Navagraha Temples in a larger map

Temples on Google Maps

Almost four years ago Google Maps started providing high resolution pictures of parts of India. It excited the devotee in me and locating temples became a huge thrill and hobby for me. 

Having grown up listening to stories of how my grandfather had visited many of the 108 Divya Desam temples and I was very interested in visiting the same. When I started living away from India I tried to visit a few of them every time during my India visit. Being born and brought up in  Madras, Triplicane Sri Parthasarathy is my favourite. It thrilled me so much to see the Triplicane temple as well as Sri Rangam Temple (my maternal grandfather is from Sri Rangam) in Google maps gave me the feeling that I have won a lottery.

As Google extended the coverage so did my thirst for mapping the Divya Desam temples. My aim was to help all those who are unable to visit the temples - due to living overseas, old age and other disabilities to have the pleasure of doing a Virtual Darshan on Google Map.

I cannot describe the excitement I had every time when high resolution pictures for a temple location became available. In the early years (2007 - 09) Google would never provide name of location along with such zoom details for Tamil Nadu / India. The collaborative efforts of local through Wikimapia, other map sites, detailed cartographic maps, I literally knew how to locate the name of places villages small towns looking at the satellite imagery.

During this mapping I  learnt that most of the towns had Shiva temple as well as Vishnu Temple so in order to identify the temple with the satellite image one had to know the direction faced by the deity, pictures of temple showing the location of different sannadhis, flag post from virtually any of the picture sites picassaweb, pbase, flickr and so on. I learnt the geography of the requisite parts Tamil Nadu and Kerala in minute detail. All the information I used to correlate the temple location were from the net.

There were no set guidelines, rulebooks or any parameters to guide me other than the thirst for Divine Worship and knowledge. 

Till now I had not created a blog of the maps and had allowed it to be found by searches in google maps, wikipedia etc. However since the search system seems to have changed I have decided to publish the same in a blog.

Till now my Divya Desam maps have had a hit of over 12,000, Navagraha Maps about to touch 5000 and Ahobilam Nava Narasimhar maps over 9000. 

Hopefully more devotees will find it useful.Blog Search