A Trip to Srisailam

During the dates 26th until 28th of May, we made a trip to Srisailam along with my parents and Jyothi Aunty Family. The initiator for this trip is Jyothi Aunty.

Sahaana's head shaving for the 2nd time happened on 26th Morning (Saturday). In fact, we were late on that function.

We started in the night by 09 to catch the bus to Srisailam at 11PM at MGBS. By the time we reached the bus stop by auto, Jyothi Aunty and Uncle were there waiting for us. Together, we completed a snack like dinner and onto the platform by 10:30PM.

Bus arrived by 11 and started there by 11:20PM on 26th. Sid took the window seat and enjoyed the view from it...he looked as if he likes to travel by bus. Drizzles came to greet us for some time and it was all fun travelling with a BIG family in the bus.

We were busy taking photographs and tracking the routs on Rupu's mobile and playing music, exchanging the eatables all were fun.

Around 01:30 AM, the bus stopped for a break and the driver was letting us know that the bus would stop for about 3-4 hours in the mid of the forest around 03AM as the forest department does not allow the traffic to go on to the ghat section to allow the animals to make moves. Also there is another reason I could see why they don't allow is that the ghat section, unlike the Tirumala's it is a one-way meaning that the vehicles that go up and the vehicles that come down share the same road, which can be dangerous especially in the nights especially with the high beams on.

The bus driver stopped the bus as he said at a place, which is 72 KM from the top of the hill and said, the bus starts by 06AM in the morning. There are so many other busses we saw at that point. The passengers were seen sleeping under the sheds that are made by the hotel owners over there.

I was a little wondered why APSRTC started the bus by 11PM and had to wait here for 3 hours making it a huge disturbance for the passengers. Instead, they can always start the bus by 01AM and make it a non-stop. I called up the customer care but they didn't have any answer to my questions. All they said was that they can make some recommendations to the senior management. I know this can never be taken care but I made my trial.

We never knew where to sleep. We can't be in the bus because of the suffocation inside and we didn’t find any other place to sleep outside. All the other passengers, who reached before us to the place were all over.

Through my parents and Rup, Sid preferred to stay inside with the windows open but I could not. Jyothi Aunty was made herself comfortable on the road itself and we were managed to get some chairs from a hotel and were relaxing until the hotel owner came shouting at us.

The bus started by 06 AM and we started to enjoy the forest on the way up. I made some place next to the driver to enjoy the place from the BIG windscreen. I found it no interesting as the trees in the forest were really less beside the road.

All of us, especially the kids and my parents enjoyed the beauty of the place from the possible window views. My parents were amazed to see the Srisailam Dam and the power plant.

Sid too enjoyed the views of the dam and water along the way. I could not click the Pics because my camera was in the luggage and I could not get it available for me.

At 08 AM (around), we stopped at a place called “Sunnipet Ring Road”, where one of aunt’s friends, who she treats like a god gifted brother, Prakash met us. He works at irrigation department at that place.

He took us to the guest house, where we were given 3 decent rooms. He made us comfortable with all the facilities, assigned us 2 workers to take care of us.

He made plan for us and said that he will be there by 10AM for a pick-up.

We got ready, had breakfast at a local hotel, which offered a quality, decent food; started for the site seeing by a jeep. While others travel by jeep, I went on bike with Prakash.

It was a different feeling while we were on the ghat section on the roads by bike into the forest towards Srisailam.

I enjoyed clicking some snaps while I was on bike.

We had been to rope way but dad was scared to come with us…It was fun convincing dad to come with us. The fun was more when the cable car on the rope way started but soon it was a very short way that hardly lasted for 2 minutes. More than the time we spent on the rope way, we spent in the queue to board it.

The rope way ended at the foot of the river, where we got into a boat and made an hour’s journey to reach caves on the other side of the river. The fun part was we, at least my parents and me and Rupu never knew how long the trip would be. We thought that’s going to be a very short boating. As the boat was going and going and the time was passing, we were surprised and were like “what’s going on?”

We met a gang of youngsters who became our buddies on the boating. They all work in Hyderabad for various companies….

Finally the boat stopped at a place from where the way that leads to the caves was really dangerous with full of rocks. Because the water level has come down now, the steep of the way that connects to the main way was too high with full of rocks.

The way was too risky and I would not advise any on this way. The road is on the foot of the hill and only single person can go on the way, the other side is a kilometer deep straight cut into the water.

By the time we reached the “Akka Mahadevi” caves, we all were tired. In fact, there is a lady called Akka Mahadevi, who prayed Lord Shiva and declared herself that she got married to Lord Shiva. Especially Kannada people make visit to these caves more often.

The smell from the caves tells us that there are more bats inside the caves. Some people who stay there, act as the guides and take the people inside to the caves. There is not proper ventilation inside and no lighting. We need to carry the lights / candles into the caves. I could manage to go inside almost half of the distance but could not go inside. The reason being that the caves narrows down after a certain point and at any point of time, only one person can go from that point onwards, after to that, they still narrows down that people need to sit and go further to reach the “Shiva lingam” which is inside the caves. Jyothi aunty could go all the way and came back with a smile on her face.

After an hour of boat journey back to the place, we reached the starting point of the boating. We again had to go back only via the rope way....again gone through a big queue, reached the starting point.

Prakash accompanied us all this time. Had a late lunch at his friend’s hotel, which was really nice in terms of the quality and cleanliness.

Meantime while all of us were having the late lunch, Prakash and myself had been to one of his friends by name Jagan, who works in the temple for the Abhishekham tickets for the next day.

I happened to see the Satyam guest house in that process.

We were engaged a jeep for the complete day’s trip. Once the ticket booking is done, we had been to the rest of the site seeing places that include the “Chenchu (Tribal) Museum”, Saibaba temple, Ganapathi Temple, Shikara Darshanam…out of all, we liked the Saibaba temple.

By the time we reached the accommodation, it was in the night by 08 AM almost. We had our lunch and slept on the terrace itself. It was nice weather all the night with some cool breeze and delightful drizzles that said “Hi” in the late night.

The next day, we had to go to the temple by 05:30AM and had to vacate the accommodation too for some reasons, which were not in our hands.

Work up by 03:30AM and got ready, struggled to pack up all the luggage, called up Prakash for a jeep. Prakash somehow with the help of Jagan accommodated us in a local hostel at Srisailam near by temple. That was horrible but had no other choice but to live with it. Prakash accompanied us inside the temple until we met Jagan inside the temple, who  guided us for the Abhishekham followed by Kumkumarchana. Somehow, I did not like the way the Abhishekham went on, I felt the process is more like insulting the GOD.

As soon as we finished with the temple formalities we met Prakash and Swathi outside the temple, had breakfast and were waiting for our turn to get into the bus. We never wanted to go to the room considering the way it was. But again we did not have any choice.

In the meantime, at the end of our day1, we came to know that YSJagan got arrested and we had a lot of disturbances all over AP. We suspected there could be some issues in this regards even on the hill but nothing like we expected. The busses ran well in fact we cancelled the evening tickets and got into a bus which started there by 03PM.

It was all fun and exciting finding the bus, cancelling the online tickets (cancellation done by Umi), finding the seats in the bus.

I developed a good rapport with the driver and enjoyed the return journey more than the up journey. We had some good time in the bus as well.

Finally, we reached here at Jubilee bus stand by 09 PM from where, Jyothi Aunty and family went to Karimnagar and we came back to Satyam Heights.

We were asking Swathi and Swetha to stay here for some more days but because Swetha felt the home sick, they went to Karimnagar.