'Inside Tirumala Tirupati', a documentary about Tirumala Tirupati, brings the story behind the temple to the small screen. The National Geographic documentary premiered on March 27, giving a 360-degree view of one of the world's most iconic temples.
'Inside Tirumala Tirupati' unraveled the stories of devotion, belief and love of the people who come to the temple.
The documentary incorporated elaborate graphics that explain the temple layout in detail re-creating the sacred inner parts of the temple. The temple that recieves 60,000-80,000 people every day is managed by hundreds of officials and priests. The documentary takes a detailed look at the priests, Jeevars (sadhus allowed to open and close the sanctum sanctorum), the kitchens that prepare meals and laddoos for lakhs of pilgrims everyday and the trek to the temple itself
Over 50,000 pilgrims every day get a 'darshan' of the idol at the Tirumala temple in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.
The one-hour special documentary gives viewers an in-depth access to the massive scale of operations, the technology used at various stages, the processes and the people who manage the mind-boggling number of devotees visiting this iconic temple.
The documentary first shows the trek to the temple and the other smaller temples that fall in between. It explains in detail the planning that goes into crowd management and food distribution. It mentions in passing the offerings made to the richest Hindu temple in the world. An interesting aspect of the documentary is that it shows how the Tirumala kitchens work. Every day, thousands of coconuts are required to prepare meals for pilgrims. These coconuts in turn are collected from the 'coconut hundi', that stores coconuts given to the temple by the devotees.
Shruti Takulia, Creative Director, India Productions, FOX Networks Group, said: "The one hour special is a spectacular culmination of the hard work the entire team has put in, since it was no mean task to do justice to a concept so challenging and so immensely ingrained in to minds of the people, not only in India, but around the world."
Watch a trailer of the documentary below.