Mysuru: It was an unmanageable traffic mess at the Chamundi Hill this morning as hundreds of vehicles carrying thousands of devotees proceeded towards the Hill. People wanted to have a darshan of the Goddess this morning, the first day of 2018.

Devotees headed towards the temple as early as 6 am and it was chock-a-bloc by around 8.30 am with all the parking spaces near Devikere and the Mahishasura Statue being full. With continuous flow of vehicles and lack of parking space atop the Hill, traffic backed up on the roads leading to the Hill.

The traffic situation got so bad that some devotees left their vehicles wherever there was space on the road and walked over a kilometre to reach the temple. This created further chaos as there were no drivers to move these randomly parked vehicles when the traffic eased. Buses and tourist maxi-cabs added to the mess as there was no place for cars to take reverse.

Some devotees who had somehow managed to reach the temple had to return without the darshan of the Goddess as there was heavy rush. Devotees made the best use of the traffic jam to visit the view points where binoculars have been set up to have a view from the top.

The Police Department had not anticipated the rush and the handful Policemen and Home Guards posted at the temple had a tough time in controlling the crowd and the ever-increasing vehicle flow.

Elsewhere in the city, a long queue of devotees was seen at the Sri Yoganarasimhaswamy Temple at Vijayanagar where special a puja was performed by the temple priests. More than two lakh ladoos were distributed as ‘prasada’ to the devotees to commemorate the beginning of the New Year.

Prof. Bhashyam Swamy, the temple head, and other priests supervised the ‘prasada’ distribution, which began in the morning. About expert 50 cooks were roped in by the temple authorities to prepare the sweet.

Likewise, devotees thronged Sri Lakshmi Venkataramanaswamy Temple at Vontikoppal. There was rush of devotees in other temples such as Sri Chandramouleshwaraswamy Temple at V.V. Mohalla, 101 Ganapathi Temple at Agrahara, Kote Anjaneyaswamy Temple at the Balarama Gate of Mysore Palace, temples inside the Ganapathy Sachchidananda Ashrama Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple and Nimishamba Temple at Srirangapatna.