After a long tussle with my frenz, I managed to win over them and convinced them for a long drive to srisailam last weekend.
Since there were many trips that we planned exhaustively but none of them fruitified in the past, so we kept the planning away from hype.
I and Lucky finalized the itinerary and confirmed with Shali and prashant on the day before of the journey.
SO on Saturday morning at 5 AM we started from Kukatpally, picked Prashant at Santosh nagar and headed towards srisailam highway via chandrayan gutta.
By 6 AM we moved out of the city, had a chance to view Sunrise amidst no concrete interventions. We had a Garam Chai at a village on the way and headed out on our way.
From a longtime we wanted to go on for a trek , incidentally last week we planned to join GHAC group for their Moulali Trek but due to our laziness didn’t wake on time and so missed the Rappelling fun. As we crossed a village called Amangal, a thought struck to us that we shall try trekking, So loaded with vengeance, we stopped our vehicle near a Hillock and climbed the hill.
As this was our first trek (that too with no safety mechanisms), we managed to climb uphill in 30 mins and descended in 35 minutes. Though the initial terrain was normal, as we steeped ahead the ascending angled increased which made our descend thrilling. At one point of time we were on our hands grappling to descend without skidding.
At 8.30AM Successfully after 75 minutes we completed the trek and scored a 1 in our trekking account.
From there we headed to a Small Dhaba for Breakfast. As I read in some blogs about the kind of food that we can expect on the way to srisailam I suggested everyone to have an extra plate of dosa to be on safe side.
After Breakfast we took the straight road to Srisailam. Our first stop was at UmaMaheswaram, a temple on hillock. Before driving on the real Ghat road of srisailam , this road provided a sample track of how to drive on the ghat road.
From here we headed to MallelaTheertham, a picturesque location with Waterfalls. It comes 56 Km's before srisailam. From where we need to take a left and drive 8 Km's on a kacha road.(the max speed that u can drive on this road is30Kms..so imagine the kind of road)
The waterfalls were great. We had a shower. There was a corporate gang who were cooking food (with drinks) and were having a blast.
After the shower we headed directly to Srisailam as all of us were exhausted. On the way we stopped at couple of view points and clicked some snaps. The real surprise was yet to come.
Once we reached srisailam we were shocked to see the crowd. Little did we realize/ knew that Karnataka and Maharashtra ppl come to Srisailam for Ugadi.
By seeing the crowd we were awestruck. It took 2 hrs for us to manage Hotel Room due to heavy rush.
After refreshing ourselves we tght we shall complete the darshan on Saturday itself. We stood in the special darshan Queue at 8PM and reached the ticket counter at 11.30PM. The temple was so crowded that it took 5 hours for us for the darshan.
We came out of temple at 1.30AM on Sunday and all 4 of us were completely out. we had chapattis which were so hard to eat that we could chew only 1 and had to leave the other one.
In the queue for 5 hours many pictures flashed through my mind. 2 Years back, on shali's bday (which incidentally was on mahasivaratri) we went to a restaurant and had chicken biryani knowing the fact that it was Sivaraatri. So I tght Lord siva wanted us to pay for our arrogance by making us stand in the Queue for 5 hrs.
The next day we woke up at 9AM, refreshed and moved out of srisailam (My car gave a little trouble but thankfully that was resolved in 2 hrs.)
On the way back again we halted at many places , we drove my car into srisailam dam water and had some fun time.
On the way back at Amangal, Prashant suggested to get some pure Palm Wine as he knew someone in that village. After some search we located the person who extracted Kallu in front of us form the tree and I tasted a glass. It was good but I didn’t dare to have one more.
By the time we reached home it was 10PM. The distance totaled to 520 Kms. This was my First long drive wherein I drove almost 400+Kms.
To view the pics click below...
http://picasaweb.google.com/krishireddy/Srisailam201002?authkey=Gv1sRgCJj6mYmq3qyViAE#