Horsely Hills

Horsley Hills is a small hill station near Madanapalle in Andhra Pradesh. To make you understand the place, I would easily say its a smaller version of Nandi hills. Its distant from Bangalore relative to Nandi hills and part of the roads is not good.

The road to the hill has couple of hair pin bends and some view points. The hill station also has options to stay and a few restaurants too.

Bugga Ramalingeswara Swamy Temple, Tadipatri

This is a temple which generally doesn't fall in a lot of travelers radar. So you can consider it an offbeat location, if you are visiting this temple for its architecture and not for some spiritual reasons. I first read about this temple in Jeyamohan's book. I visited this temple on a sunny summer day with clear blue sky and the the ferocious sun. The area around the temple had lot of big trees which offered some shadow for my car to be parked.

The temple is located in the banks of river Penna and the river was in a sad state with not even a single drop of water flowing in it. The river had some small pits in it where dhobies were washing their clothes and drying it up in the hot sun. The water in the pits didn’t look so fresh as it was stagnant. I again wanted to visit this place when the river is flowing with water. This is not the first time I have crossed Penna, I have been to Gandikota earlier and have crossed Penna enroute to Hyderabad and the way back from Vishakapatnam near Nellore.

The temple’s legend and history is well documented in Tadipatri Kaifiyat. As every temple in India this Shiva temple has its own legend. And it’s up to the observer to take in the part of the story he wants and spit out the parts which his brains can’t imagine and believe it to be true.

According to Tadipatri Kaifiyat, Ramalinganayudu, a chieftain of the Vijayanagara empire tasked with the administration of Gandikota seema built this temple. When Ramalinga’s cows were taken to the fields to graze, one particular animal used to empty its milk on an ant-hill. The cowherd had hurled an axe at the ant-hill. The night Ramalinga has a dream in which the Lord told him the cowherd had harmed him. Ramalinga was asked to build a temple at the spot. And now you have this beautiful temple.

By the looks of us, people there understood the purpose of our visit and one local guy came forward to show us the temple. Since I was not able to speak his local language, it was difficult to converse with him. But nonetheless, he was helpful.

The temple adheres to dravidian architecture of temples. It has three gopuras with a compound wall and the inner sanctum sanctorum. The sanctum sanctorum is plain and since we had reached there in the afternoon we were not able to witness the deity. The gopuras had a lot of beautiful statues and was dark black in color. This might be due to the dark black stone available in the region.

I am not even going to try to explain how beautiful the temple was. My mere words will not do justice to the beauty of the temple. Go visit the temple to dive and enjoy its beauty.

And the best part is you can cover this on a weekend road trip from Bangalore. We had started early morning from Bengaluru to Belum caves. We tried to reach Belum caves by the time they open the counter as it gets hot so soon. And then we visited Tadipatri en route to Gandikota. We camped in Gandikota for the night and started back to Bangalore on Sunday morning and checked out Lepakshi on the way back.

Sri Ram Sagar Reservoir

On our road trip to witness the Kumbmela, we stopped at this dam on our second day of our trip covering from Hyderabad to Jabalpur. February was not a great month to travel. None of the rivers we have crossed till now had enough water to be considered as one. We decided to check this place since it was only 3 kilometer away from the National Highway and traveling in highways was too fast and took me too far away from the slow moving people.

We crossed the Godavari river and took a left to the smaller roads. The scene changed rapidly from the average scene you see on a highway. The place looked as if it was so much deep in poverty.

Small road side scenes in Telangana

Its said that "Dams are the temples of the Modern India" and people who stayed just next to the temples were living in poverty. I am also from a village and I had seen huts like this during my childhood days. I was in the opinion that huts and gone for good these days. It felt like these people are left behind in the economical growth by at least 10 years.

We were welcomed by buffalos.

We were welcomed by buffalos blocking our way. We had to wait till they clear the way to go ahead. Following Google maps, we reached a spot which was marked as View point to find nothing there.

The place marked as view point on Google Maps

We stopped the car and walked up the bund.

We stopped our car there and walked up the bund to witness the Dam. The dam was huge. Might be the biggest dam I have ever seen. I was expecting an empty dam, but was shocked to see water in it. I used to thing my village is poor because, we do not have enough water to do agriculture. But might be I was wrong. Even with enough water, agriculture is not going to increase the living standards of people.

It just makes me think, might be what Arundhati Roy says in Walking with Comrades about Dams is true.

There was a time when believing that Big Dams were the ‘temples of Modern India’ was misguided, but perhaps understandable. But today, after all that has happened, and when we know all that we do, it has to be said that Big Dams are a crime against humanity.

Penukonda Fort

Penukonda is small town in the Ananthpur district of Andhra. I had noticed this place when I had gone to Gandikota and wanted to check this place. Later when I read a travelgoue in which the author has visited this place I also wanted to visit here.

And this place has come into my radar multiple times. I learned that the rulers of Hampi had taken Penukonda as their capital after the fall of Hampi. All this together made me check this place.

But today the current state of the place is real sad. The place has lot of tourism values but is left uncared for. And the shocking news was when we enquired the locals about the spots to visit. Almost all the people we enquired mentioned there is nothing to see here. Gagan mahal was locked and we entered few fort walls to explore the place. We were only welcomed with cold stares by people around us.

Gandikota - The Great Canyon of India

Yet another last minute road trip to the long-awaited Gandikota.

The last stretch of road to Gandikota is one hell of a ride. We were welcomed with a drizzle and a rainbow which calmed the weather a bit. When we were driving back from Gandikota, we were sent off with lighting all around us. Watching lightning frequently on the horizon from your car is an experience in itself.

And thanks to Google Maps, we got lost in some random village road when it got dark. The only light in the whole vicinity was from our car. We switched off our vehicle lights in the amidst the road and all you could see around is darkness.

Us entering the Gandikota fort

Charminar

The fort wall

Prototype mosque

Mosque

Minaret

Map 

Granary

Gorge

Penna river