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.