Tirupati is one of the important abode of Lord Venkateshwara, also known as Lord Vishnu. This temple city is located in south India in the state of Andra pradesh. The temple is situated on 7 hills, known as Tirumala. Temple is open all the 365 days of the year. Darshan (Visiting the temple) is allowed in time slots. There are are two major Queue for Darshan.
Queues:
One of them is called Dharma-darshan, for which there is no fee. The other one is called Sudarshan-darshan, with a fee of Rs.50/- per person. There are other types of darshan available such as Sheegra-darshan, with a fee of Rs.750/-, VIP entrance.
All the queue merge before having Darshan of the Temple Diety, Lord Venkateshwara. Basically the differentiation is on the logic of people paying might be lesser compared to the ones who don't want to. So, usually the Sudarshan-Darshan is smaller queue than the Dharma-darshan. Though sometimes it might happen that the Sudarshan-Darshan is longer than Dharma-Darshan on a particular day, resulting in more time being spent by Sudarshan queque folks. This might happen with the Sheegra-Darshan queue.
Special Poojas:
There are other ways of Darshan on some special days of the year. This happens when there is special pooja (Rituals) performed. For this tickets will be available and could be booked for 2 or more people, depending on availability. The Darshan for these special pooja will be usually in early morning and coinciding with the normal Darshans.
Special kind of Queue:
There is another unique Darshan method for people who go on foot to the hill-temple. Walking up the hill to the shrine normally take around 3 hours for an average person. These pilgrims who go on foot get a token on their way up the hill, which gets endorsed at some other point on the way up hill before shrine. Once on top of the hill, there is a special queue which is only for people with the token. As mentioned earlier all the queues of normal darshan (other than special pooja tickets) get merged before Darshan.
Darshan:
There are two important shrines on top of the hill. One is Sri Varaha Swamy temple and the other one is the main temple the Sri Venkateshwara (Sri Varu) temple. Many believe that pilgrims have to first have darshan of Sri Varaha swamy and then have Darshan of Lord Venkateshwara. This is due the mythology that Lord Sri Varaha swamy (also one of the avatars of Lord Vishnu) owned the Tirumala, before Lord Venkateshwara landed on earth. He had give permission to Lord Venkateshwara to stay on the hill.
Practically many pilgrims have darshan of Sri Varaha swamy after Lord Venkateshwara. Sometime some of the pilgrims miss having Darshan of Sri Varaha swamy altogether.
Time taken for Darshan:
The usual time taken from the time you enter the queue till darshan of Diety:
Dharma darshan : 2 hours to 8 hours
Sudharshan darshan : 1 hour to 4 hours
Sheegra darshan : <1 hour to 2 hours
Walking pilgrim darshan : 2 hours to 8 hours
Special pooja tickets : 30 mins to 2 hours
These times are during usual conditions. These will change based on how many pilgrims are actually visiting a particular day and the special poojas being performed on that day. Also it is sometimes affected by some high-profile VIP visit to temple.
The times are bound to be drastically high during special days such as new year (1st Jan), Vaikunta Ekadashi, summer holidays of school going children, weekends and long weekends.
