After much deliberation we decided to take the trip to Gandikota, in Andhra Pradesh's Kadapa district. An adventurous location at 350 kms away from Chennai and in a neighbouring state was a first for us. We decided to do it as a weekend trip, so left Chennai on a Saturday morning.
Leaving Chennai at 5:30 AM, we took the Nellore route to Jammalamadugu, the nearest town to Gandikota. Internet said, there is not much stays in Gandikota except the AP government owned one. So we decided to stay in Jammalamadugu and drive up to Gandikota the next day. We had our breakfast at RS Bhavan at Sholavaram. Food and price was recommendable. After this it was continuous drive towards Jammalamadugu. Once we crossed over to Andhra Pradesh at Tada it was a easy drive as the roads were reasonably good and there was almost no traffic expect for the patches where we had to navigate through small towns.
We were able to reach Jammalamadugu around 12:30pm. When we contacted our local friend, the suggestion was to go for Gandikota and take private room at JC Resort. Also the hotel we saw in Jammalamadugu was not to our satisfaction. By 1:30 PM we came out to Hotel Sivalingam for lunch following our check-in to JC Resort. The AP tourism's Hotel Haritha was booked due to weekend visitors. Near Hotel Haritha, many private rooms have mushroomed in. The restaurant at Hotel Sivalingam was a modest one offering meals for lunch costly Rs.100 per plate. We were given rice, pappu, rasam, buttermilk, poriyal, pickle and papad in a plate. We took a much needed siesta before we left to the creek by 4:30 PM.
Rains played spoilsport, we could not watch the sunset scenery. In 500 meters was the Gandikota fort wall. We went past that to see historical structures and remains of the fort. There was a jail first on the left hand side and the right hand side was occupied by local residences. So we had to navigate through the narrow lane to get further into the fort. We could see two stand alone structures and weaponry area. Then comes a mosque and another old structure atop a small mount. As we walk further we are into the path that leads to the creek view. The path is mountainous, we need to carefully walk past as it started ti drizzle and making the path slippery. When we reached the view point, it took our breath away, the Pennar river shinning in green in the drizzly between the mountains was just picturesque. We could sit there only for few minutes as it started raining and getting dark as well. So we left the fort to get back.
We went to Haritha for tea. It is difficult to get tea since we crossed over to Andhra Pradesh this morning. The tea shops here sell tea already made and stored in flasks and taste is no near to the tea we get back at home. We had gobi manchurian and onion pakoda along with the tea and went to our room. By 9 PM we had roti and dhal fry here again and closed our day. But in the resort, party was on by other tourists with wood-fire and barbeques.
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