Welcome 2019 – Andhra Ride – Dec 2018
Apart from a few well-known places like Tirupati / Nellore / Vizag / Hyderabad / Belum Caves / Gandikota, Andhra / Telangana belt was largely unexplored.
The Grand Plan was to head to Araku Valley and return by New Years. Keeping our stays to smaller towns, ad-hoc stays.
We had to reschedule our itinerary as I was to head to Hyderabad to celebrate New years Eve with family.
We decided the route to be Bangalore – Nallamalla Forest – then head towards lambasingi. Staying overnight somewhere along the way. Lambasingi to Araku / Jeypore.
From Jeypore I would return to Hyderabad via Warangal, and he would return to Bangalore after 2-3 more days via Nellore / Tirupati / Chennai etc.
We reached the Nala Malla forest gates by late noon, leaving Bangalore at dawn and a quick breakfast on the way.
We realised that booking was confirmed at Pancherla and not Bailuty.
Bookings were unavailable on the fly and so we headed to Srisailam instead.
We reached Srisailam by about 7:30 pm and hunted for accommodation. There were many hotels/dorms and a Telangana Tourism hotel as well.
Telangana Tourism Hotel accepts only online bookings. It has no facilty to accept on the spot bookings.
None of the other dorms do a spot booking and most wouldn’t communicate in anything else except Telugu.
We stopped at a restaurant for some grub and to plan our next course onward. The nearest town we could think of was mannanur. The restaurant informed us to go to the central reservation counter inside the shopping complex.
We signed up for a 2-night stay, in an AC room for 1400/- for 2 people. The rooms were large, mattresses a bit hard, and an almost dead AC and no Geyser!
We checked into the rooms and walked around Srisailam to check out the place at night.
By 9:30 pm, the place was dead to the world, with very few shops open and most pilgrims back in their rooms.
