Rocky Roads leads to Gorge-ous Place

With Dasara coming and it leading to a long weekend the holiday freak in me got excited and started to make plans about going somewhere. I first got stuck at the options whether I should go to the coast or hills but wanted to go visit some place which was less crowded as I was searching for places Gandikota caught my attention. My friends had visited Gandikota recently and that was something which made more eager and ironically I belong to the same region and yet never got the opportunity to visit the place.

Now the destination was fixed but with whom was another thing. Then I called up my friend Rohan who also wanted to see Gandikota and he confirmed that he would join. Now how to go was another thing, I wanted to go on my bike which is TVS Victor a basic commuter, I was skeptical because it isn’t a very powerful bike and doubted it’s capacity. Did some research and ended up being confident that I could pull off the trip. Now everything being fixed I had the task of convincing my parents who at first didn’t approve but eventually let me go. Now with everything fixed I was waiting for the day.

Day 1:

Having been excited I couldn’t sleep a lot but on the set of dawn woke up got ready had my breakfast and set off. The time being 8am not the ideal start time for a trip started off from my house to Rohan’s house. He took some time and we left the city around 9 and there we go first ever time on the highway. Our first stop was for fuel a little after crossing Chikkaballapur where we filled full tank and stretched our legs and made our move. After an hour we were near Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border. Another 3 kms we were near the Lepakshi road entrance half an hour from there we reached Lepakshi. Being a long weekend there was a huge crowd which kind of irked me and made me worry about the scene in Gandikota. Then we spent some time in the Veerabhadra temple and clicked some pictures around , we visited the Jatayu and looked around from the top and we even got free breakfast (prasadam).

We now made a move towards Gandikota which was another 180 kilometers and the road was new to us. After a while we reached the NH44 and made a progress towards our destination. We had to bid a goodbye to the highway as we made progress towards Gandikota. From here the road was a single lane and state highway which meant dealing with unmarked speed breakers. It started to drizzle as we were nearing Kadiri where we decided to have our lunch. We reached Kadiri after riding in the drizzle which was quite amazing. We had filling lunch and made progress towards our destination. We had another 2hrs journey left and the skies too were clearing so the ride from here was breezy. After travelling a bit we saw a lot of traffic and expected some accident but it was the rush for people visiting a waterfall which was a result of heavy rains. We did make a stop to see the falls not like the ones in western ghats but was still good. After travelling a while from here we were welcomed with mighty rocks on both sides of the road which is mesmerizing to look at we did click some pictures here and made our move ,from here the roads are better we crossed Pulivendula by the ring road and were left with the last leg of our journey.

We were cruising from here. The view was good, empty lands hills on the far background clear and orange skies and canals here and there on the roadside. We reached Muddanur (remember the place because the best scenery starts from here) and asked the locals the way to Gandikota and made progress it was getting a bit dark hence we decide to watch the sunset from the road itself and later made progress to Gandikota it was dark by then we got a tent and camped for the night.

Day 2:

Woke up early by setting an alarm to see the sunrise from Grand canyon of India which is one hell of an experience. We did explore around a bit by climbing the rocks and taking picture around . We drank tea and ate biscuits and decided to skip breakfast. We had made a plan to return in a different and a longer route. We made progress towards Tadipatri and reached around 11 we were in search of a hotel to have breakfast but couldn’t find any so we made a move and decided to have an early lunch in Anantapur. We left Tadipatri and started towards Anantapur even this road has good views as we neared Anantapur we saw a big lake on the right side of the road we made stop here and spent sometime here. The lake’s name is Singanamala cheruvu which is a very huge lake and was filled to max because of heavy rains. The background had windmills which is amazing with lake beside. We reached Anantapur had lunch and made progress towards Bengaluru. From here it was the Hyderabad-Bengaluru highway which meant smooth roads. After stopping for one last time we reached Bengaluru by evening marking the end of an amazing trip.