The Alampur Trip…

The first thing my Hyderabadi friend uttered when I told him about my weekend adventure in my Yellow Wagon R (YWR) to Alampur was… “What’s there in Alampur?”

If you are one of those like me who actual enjoy the journey (n don’t fake it) and are not bothered about the destination, Alampur is a place 15 kms off the Hyderabad – Bangalore highway 200 kms from Hyderabad. Quite literally it has broad band connectivity as the road as on 12th Dec 2010 is really express way standard. This road is superb to take your car for a spin. You can actually test what your engine and you can endure on this highway in terms of speeds.

“Alampur near Kurnool is home to the Nava Bhramma temples. These were built by the Badami Chalukyas, who ruled for about 200 years from the middle of the sixth century onwards. The Badami Chalukyas built several temples in Karnataka, and the Alampur temples in Andhra Pradesh. The Alampur site preserves archeological remains in the form of temples exhibiting a hybrid style of architecture - dating back to the 6th-7th centuries CE” or this is what the various websites said…

When we reached there we got to visit a brand new under construction temple site. Yes there were a few temple like structures but they too did not look historic but just ill maintained…

All in all it is a nice weekend drive and you can go and come back in a day.

One last thing that I learnt in hindsight: The road when you get off the highway is not so great so a good idea would be to park your car at the intersection and take an auto for the last 15 kms. There are a lot of state transport buses too that will help you stretch and unwind till you reach the Temple Complex. This will save you the trauma of driving on a typical Indian village road.

Humped my way to Hampi and Back

This independence day I Humped my way to Hampi and Back in the Yellow Wagon R...

Long weekends have a thing or two about them about them. Plus this was the 15th of August 2009.

It was exactly 3 years back Usha & I decided to break some rules and unite forever. So it was time to celebrate.

Hampi is close to 400 kms from Hyd and the route we took from GachiBowli was...

GachiBowli to Shamshabad (good airport road) to Jadcherla (superb Bangalore Highway) to Mahboobnagar to Raichur (2 Right turns) to Lingasur and Sindhanur (Via a Left) towards Manvi to Gangavati (ok roads till now) to Hampi (very bad road).

The last stretch of road of about 35 kms is in a very bad condition.

Our search for accommodation was a short one as Hampi the town is very small and good, clean and reasonable rooms available. Food too is good and nice. Vegetarian food is inexpensive and usually available in the room itself if ordered in time.

The Tungabhadra flows through Hampi so we took a long walk along the river on 15th August. There was some kind of a cycle race going on there. Saw that but never understood the concept coz it dint look like anybody won.

The Archaeological Survey of India has marked out a lot of sites that are of interest in Hampi. To see all of them it takes 3 days or that is what they say. We made a mistake of taking a guide for 3 hours. Cost us a bomb Rs.400/-. Please don’t make this mistake. Take a book that the local boys sell for Rs.20/- and walk/ drive or cycle around the marked route.

The Lotus Palace is the most preserved structures at Hampi. It has beautiful lawns and is photogenic. Then there is this golden Chariot like structure which is very photogenic however the approach road to this place is kaccha and thus drive to this place at your own risk.

We were told by our opulently paid guide that since it is the 15th of August we should go to Hospet which was just 12 kms away to see the damn. He told us that today all the 34 gates would be open and the sight of the water flowing would be breathtaking.

Driving to Hospet was not easy as people on bikes were out to prove their freedom and celebrate India’s independence. Also the sight of the damn was far from being breathtaking. It was a real piss off.

We drove back the next day taking the same route and enjoyed stopping and clicking pictures of the Thermal power Plant over the River Krishna at Raichur.

Hyderabad to Shirdi and back (2006)

As I am not so confident with my driving I had called Imtiyaz Bhai my friend on Saturday to help me drive up to the RTO for registering my Car. The thing at the RTO office took just 30 seconds and thus we decide to go for a long drive.


We thought we could go up to Zahirabad which is a distance of 100 kms and test the Cars AC n its cooling in 46 degrees outside temperature Imtiyaz always knew that I wanted to go to Shirdi with my car and thus half way down to Zahirabad suggested that we try and attempt Shirdi. According to both of us Shirdi should not have been more than 300 kms from Hyderabad. So we decided to give it a shot.


And what a shot it was. In a single pair of clothes, with less than Rs.2000 in the pocket, no charger for our mobiles we decided to test the baby with only courage to fall back upon.


It is only on the highway you realize how useless your credit card company's most accepted promise is. No we dont take Visa, Sorry Master Card not accepted and this ATM is out of order made us feel we would be pushing our luck soon. But as they say HE has got the whole World in His hands. A Reliance Petrol pump in the middle of nowhere accepted my master card..


The moment we crossed Zahirabad we realized we had to drive more than what we had bargained for as Sholapur was more than 200 kms from there. We had set out at 2.00 in the afternoon and planned to reach Sholapur by six but reached there only at about 8 in the evening. We decided to have dinner and thus reach Shirdi by 10 but there again we realized that a Wagon R will not be able to cover 300 kms in 2 hours.. Yes Shirdi is 300 kms from Sholapur.


Imtiyaz is an expert driver and has driven in many parts of the world he loves driving and so we decided that there was no point turning back.The Road form Hyderabad to Sholapur is a good National Highway with disciplined traffic as this road further goes on to connect to first Pune and then Bombay. The road beyond Sholapur is also good till a place called Timburli but from then on to Amhednagar it is a good road but with only trucks plying on it so the discipline goes for a toss and overtaking any vehicle is like trying to elope with the truck drivers daughter.


I always thought that Nagar (Amhednagar is called Nagar by Maharashtrians) was only 20 kms from Shirdi I realized I was wrong It was 83 kms. We some how managed to reach Shirdi at 3 am on Sunday.. A weekend implied that there was no vacancy at most places but some how we found a room to rest. As we were to visit a temple we had to have a bath and so we had to get up at 5 and freshen up. The darshan line was long enough to ensure we stood from 7 to 8. After that both of us went to a road side stall and hogged as if we had accompanied Moses through his 40 day desert march.


Imtiyaz always wanted to visit the Ajanta & Ellora caves near Aurangabad and I was in no mood to go back straight home. We again decided to go. Moreover I am a fan of the architecture of the Daulatabad fort which is very much on the way. Aurangabad is around 100 kms from Shirdi and this time I was not wrong. There are two new routes that one can chose from and we decided on the one which is a by pass 4 lanes a side National Highway. This by pass originates a few kms before Kopergaon and the very sight of the opening toll plaza was making us salivate for speed. On the highway we drove the fastest we could with hardly any traffic on either side. We never realized why there was no traffic and no toll collected from us until around 25 kms from Kopergaon we came across a bridge which was yet to be completed. In fact this highway it self was yet to be completed.


I had seen Speed the movie and was in no mood to let my passion yellow baby do any thing like what they did with the bus in the film so we decided to try something else. A passer by cyclist informed us that the next 40 kms (up to Lasur) there was no pakka road. So it was a little detour from under the bridge over a creaking set of wooden planks and on to the mud track it was for the next 40 kms. My baby was being tested for more than what I had bargained for. A cribbing Imtiyaz kept scaring me by telling me that the gears were having problems and a puncture was inevitable, but the zooming Sumos and jeeps made me feel a little reassured. I always knew that Maharashtra had the best Road Transport bus network in the world. But today I realized how true to the fact and their slogan Where there is a Road there will be an ST is. In the wilderness of interior Maharashtra we met a few ST buses blazing a mud trail like a comet. The sight was amazing and I really missed my camera.


After driving at 20 to 30 ka speed for around an hour and a half we reached Lasur. This slow driving on the 2nd and 3rd gear ensured that we were low on petrol. At Lasur to our surprise we got a petrol pump and here we met the highway again. Imtiyaz pushed the paddle to the limit and my car also responded as if it was enjoying it and with in less than 40 min we were near Aurangabad. At Aurangabad we first came across the Daulatabad fort. Did you know that this fort has never been conquered by any army in aggression and that this was the capital of India for 10 odd years when Muhammad Bin Tughlaq felt insecure about Delhi?


As we had no plans to go up the fort we decided to move on. Next we visited the grave of Aurangzeb. I have always had this fascination about the way the guys around his grave tell you the story of this Mughal emperor. Having studied in Bombay all my life I was always told by my history teacher that this guy was the worst among all the Mughal rulers. The story that the guys around his grave tell you is an all together different one. They define him as a very simple man who knew that he was left with very little money thanks to his father building the Taj Mahal. His grave is very simple and does not look like an Emperors grave.


From there we moved up the hills and landed up at Ellora. It was here that I realized that my colorful friend Imtiyaz was a pervert who thought that the carvings at Ellora had sexually explicit depictions. When I told him that neither Ellora nor Ajanta had any thing like that but were very beautiful any which way, he lost interest and I had to almost drag him to see the caves..Soon I realized it was no use trying to flog a dead horse moreover Ajanta is 110 kms away from Ellora so I decided to return to Aurangabad and from there Hyderabad.


Aurangabad is a place where Shiv (my colleague) was born and brought up so I decided to give him a call and ask him the best route to take while returning. He Suggested Jalna Nanded Nizamabad. This is the same route that the Indian Army had taken to annex the Nizams state of Hyderabad after Sardar Patel decided enough was enough. So we set out after sipping a cup of tea.


Once before in my life around 14 years ago when I was doing a summer job in college I had visited both Jalna and Nanded and have faint memories of the place. Jalna was a busy junction then as the broad gauge railway line terminated there and from then on till Nanded was a meter gauge line. I remember distinctly that my journey from Nanded to Jalna was an overnight one and today I realized that the distance between the two places was just around 100 kms. We had estimated dinner time would have been in Nanded. So just before we reached we stopped at a dhaba to eat. The experience was different and to be honest I did not enjoy sitting on a char pai n trying to balance food on a wooden plank.


When we reached Nanded we felt it had been raided by the US army. It looked like a town in Afghanistan. Roads in bad shape, buildings crumbling, people non-cooperative, etc Dont know why but that did leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Nanded is also a Sikh pilgrim place and they say the most number of Sardars you will find out side of the Punjab will be here. We felt a little sorry for the people there due to the bad roads but moved on.


This point forward we were confronted with a strange problem. No milestones or sign boards. We had been diving for more than 24 hours now with only 2 hours of sleep n that was telling on us. Imtiyaz was not able to drive faster than 50 ka speed and I felt we needed a break. Somehow Imtiyaz would not give up. In the hundreds of argument and conversations we were having we missed a important turn and landed up on a forest area road that promised to reach Hyderabad via Sri Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh. When we asked a Truck wala, he told us that though this was a short cut the road is through the jungle so we should drive carefully. This scared the shit out of me at least. Imtiyaz was not looking deterred at all. There was nobody on this road for miles together. Small Adivasi villages just came up from almost nowhere and then disappeared in to oblivion. We stopped at one such village as we had run out of water. Seeing a car stop in a village that had no electricity at 1.00 am made a crowd of men folk gather around us. Though they were looking hostile, when we asked for water they did help us out.


We went on driving till we could drive no more. We stopped 80 kms from Hyderabad near what looked like a Electricity Traction Sub station at 4.00 am. The Wagon R is a beautiful camping car. It flattens itself out to an extent that is a bed for two. I was proud to show off this feature to my friend and we went off to sleep for 2 hours. At Six when the Sun came up we realized that we had parked our car on the banks of a beautiful lake formed by a dam that was used to supply electricity. The birds made a lot of noise and the entire scenario was real beautiful.


Six onwards we decided to drive home. The road we were cursing was very beautiful. We had dense forest on both sides and nothing following us or coming from the opposite side. For the first time we could actually listen to the usually silent engine sing. The sight of the rising sun was almost from a movie. I realized the 1300 odd kms we had done was nothing less than a movie. Imtiyaz however kept whining about the fact that there were no erotic scriptures in Ellora. If only he had asked me..


I was so tired from the trip that I decided to take an off on Monday and used the day to keep in my car now a travel kit that will help me combat such impulsive travel urges of mine.

NizamSagar Via Medak (2007)

I was looking out for a place to go self driven in my Yellow Wagon R (YWR) which is about 100 odd kilometers. After all this was my first sortie in my YWR out of Hyderabad. I must confess that I am not exactly confident with my driving but Ships are Very Safe in the Harbour, but that is not what ships were built for


Medak is around 100 kms from Hyderabad and thus was the obvious choice. It has a Church which locals (who have no idea what a diocese is) claim is second only to the Vatican in size.


Well Just for the record, A Diocese is like a district of a Church. It signifies the area of jurisdiction of the Church. So the Medak Church might be the biggest diocese but is most defiantly not the biggest church.


My plan also included visiting the Medak fort plus Pocharam Dam, Forest & Wildlife Sanctuary.


A day before we started our journey, I decided to do a virtual tour of the route on Google Earth. This turned out to be a good idea coz I realized that the Pocharam project was not exactly a big enough water body. On Google Earth I discovered the SINGURU Nizam Sagar PROJECT over the Manjira Reservoir. The only thing now bugging my mind was that fact that this would now become a 350 odd kilometer trip.


We started on a Saturday morning from Hyderabad and followed an unconventional route to Medak along the Bombay Highway up to PATANCHERU. At Patancheru, almost from the market we took a right turn to go to NARSAPUR. The road along this stretch is narrow and infested with reckless truck drivers who have scant respect for anything that looks like a car. The best idea that struck me was to follow a Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) that was going fast enough for me to follow. We did a good 60 to 70 behind the LCV and reached Narsapur with in no time at all. On the way we crossed a village called Daulatabad.


After Narsapur the Road improved drastically and almost all of a sudden, the truck drivers looked a lot more civilized. We then reached KAUDPALLI n the country around us became greener. All my travel around Hyderabad has made me believe that the landscape here is parched and barren but I now realized I was traveling North of Hyderabad and thus exploring quite literally greener pastures.


At MEDAK we first decided to visit the Church and to be honest I was a little pissed off when I was asked to remove my shoes to enter the Church. I mean, as a Catholic I know that we stopped doing this after we had broken off from the Jews around two millenniums ago. Anyway, the other thing that may annoy even non Christians is the number of urchins that descend upon you. We had to make a hasty retreat to my YWR and decided to next conquer the Medak Fort.


The problem asking people in Medak about where the fort is that, they would just point towards it and not tell us where to start the climb. After circumnavigating the entire village that surrounds the fort we finally were shown the way to a nice concrete path that we could do in our YWR almost taking us 1/4ths the way up to the fort. Here we sat for a while and had our breakfast. My equal partners in crime Usha & Christelle were taking great pleasure in making fun of me trying to some times inspect and some times admire my YWR.


So we began to climb and it was not as difficult in the beginning as there was a nice cool breeze blowing. On our way up we befriended a group of school girls and Usha with her broken Telugu was an instant hit with the kids. Slowly but surely we found our way to the top of the fort clicking pictures all the way. The view from the top is not exactly panoramic but this was the turning point of my journey. We met a caretaker of the fort on top and he suggested a short cut from Pocharam to Nizam Sagar that was not documented on any of the maps I had gone through.


We quickly descended from the fort and made our way to Pocharam. All that one has to do is drive past the MedakChurch and then take a left to Pocharam which is around 15 to 20 kilometers away.


We then made a halt at the POCHARAM PROJECT which is a beautiful lake. Again here we went trigger (click) happy and finally realized that Christelle the genius with a camera was running low on her batteries. Here I used the lake water to wash the windshield of my YWR as the ladies chatted away n giggled at the fat man madly in love with his car.


We then crossed over to the Nizamabad District and made a halt Yellareaddy. My YWR I must say was drawing a lot of attention but our main mission here was to recharge the batteries. I just realized here how easy it was for girls to get some one to agree to charge the batteries. We then had some tea and wandered of to a small lake behind the village armed with some Samosas and some Mysore Bhajji. It was an instant picnic as we had some great birds for company. We saw an eagle fly real low and park him self nicely on a tree near us. Christelle did try to click some pictures with her mobile phone but realized what a handicap a toy camera could be.


We then drove off with Christelles batteries semi charged towards Nizam Sagar. On our way we did halt to click come pea hens but ended up clicking palm trees growing out of other trees.


We reached the dam just in time for the Sunset and the sight was amazing. I have done the Nagarjunasagar and the Srisailam dams in the last 100 days and can bet on it that the AP Tourism guys are well n truly retarded for not promoting the Nizam Sagar along with the Manjira Wild life Sanctuary. One of the main things I enjoyed here was driving on the dam. The lake along side the dam has many islands and a few enterprising fishermen fish till late in the evening.


We drove up to the other side of the dam and parked ourselves on top a small hillock that had an abandoned observatory like View Point. The place was cool but an eerie feeling lingered around it. The place somehow reminded me of the movie Picnic on the hanging Rock.


We sat there for a while watching the stars and debating about any movement among the stars. It is a Plane! I said n Usha reacted No it is a star that moves. Ok may be not. It is a Satellite. And the argument continued. UFO no Meteorite


Finally it was pitch dark and we decided to go to a village nearby to get our selves some dinner. We drove down to the Village called Nizam Sagar and had some good Chicken 65 which did not look like the dish we had ordered for but never the less tasted amazing Then we did not know where to park for the night. The two girls in my car were insisting that we go back up the eerie abandoned hill and spend a scary night there, which I was not inclined to. Usha suggested a night on the Dam but then some people scared us about the Naxals. Finally we were advised to look for a shelter in the Government Guest house.


We some how convinced the caretaker of the Government Guest House to let us sleep inside our car but with in his premises till 5 in the morning. The YWR spans itself out into quite a flat Air Plane like bed for two. However we were three


Next morning before 5 Tatha the caretaker shooed us out of the place We did my favorite thing drove over the dam umpteen times in my YWR and finally at day break landed ourselves on top of that hill again.


Dawn was breath taking. The birds that flew around were fun to watch. We went trigger happy all over again. We also ventured up to the eerie looking structure on top of the hill and were pleasantly surprised to find nothing terrifying. Just goes to show that the fear of the unknown is only mental in nature


We were a little tired by now and were told that boating on the lake stars only at 11 so with a heavy heart decided to head back


On our way back we took the ANDOLE SANGAREDDI route on to the Bombay high way which is along a river. We met with many lakes on the way and had to drive past caravans of bullock carts loaded with sugarcane. The Road is good so we did an average speed of over 70 till we were back to Hyderabad.

Anantagiri Hills 80 kms from Hyderabad (2007)

I had some how just managed to park my Yellow Wagon R at Morine Bakery when a Silver colour Ford Fiesta pulled over right behind me and a mean looking guy got out of it, walked towards me and asked me “is this your parking space.” And when I said no… he asked again “Then y r u parking here.” I had no idea what to tell him… n was just thinking with a grim face… When a smile broke over the mean looking man’s face n he said “Hi, I am Krishna Mohan.”

This is how it all began for me…

10 Guys most of whom had never met each other before met at the Morine Bakery at 7 in the morning to undertake one of my most memorable drives in recent times…

Two Cars and a Bike sped away on a superb road to Vikarabad after having a light breakfast at Farmaish Café. Imtiyaz bhai who was driving my car pushed the paddled till the speedometer touched 100.

We reached Vikarabad by 9 to be joined by Rahul the local lad from Anantagiri. From there on we were actually looking out for hills. At this point I actually thought the entire thing was a disappointment. Someone even suggested that we add the word ‘desperate’ to the name of our trekking group on Orkut, when we tried to just ramble off the road and walk into some thorny bushes.

Rahul himself was quite apologetic about the place. He suggested two more ‘view points.’ The first one was almost as if we were standing on the 2nd floor of a building and looking down. The route to the second one made it a little interesting. However, when we reached there it was just a cliff overlooking the ghat road…

All this while the main hero of the trip was Shaibal’s Enfield. Most of us were mounting it and Aditya was obliging one and all with his Canon camera pictures.

Finally Rahul suggested that we go to the dam. After driving for around 20 kms and then around 5 kms on a dirt track we reached the highlight of this trip, ‘The lake.’

The lake was simply so marvelous that Ankur, Shaibal and Bibhujit stripped themselves right down to their underwear and jumped into the cool waters. Imtiyaz by now had befriended a few locals and we wandered around to try and circumnavigate the lake… Imtiyaz and Rahul gave up soon and found a nice shade under a tree and decided to relax. Soon Imtiyaz bhai was snoring and Rahul digitally recording the sound of his snore as a ringer tone.

Aditya, Srinath, Vishal and yours truly had to abandon the mission to circumnavigate the lake when we reached a rivulet. We sat there and Aditya served us some life giving bread and butter. We then walked back to where we had parked the cars and off we hit the road again to Vikarabad. All this while we were either cracking jokes or networking.

On the way we visited a temple where a spring of water seemed to give out a perennial source of bathing water that came out from a sculpted cow’s mouth. It was interesting taking some pictures there.

Rahul then took us to his place and from there to a dhaba where we waited for more than 45 minutes for some lovely food. When the treat arrived it surely gave our digestive systems a run for the money. I even felt the effects of the spice on Sunday morning.

When we were about to leave the dhaba, Shaibal spotted a flat front tyre. My virgin car had just had its first puncture… It was kind of adventurous with all of us experimenting and only one guy Krishna Mohan actually knowing how to do it. Thanks to Krishna my car was back on track with in 15 minutes…

We then bid bye bye to Rahul and sped back to Farmaish where we all assembled once more for a cup of Tea. Thus ended my first trip with newfound friends on Orkut’s Hyderabad Trekking. Promising each other that the next trip will be soon, we all went our way with lovely memories of the trip.