Sunday, October 24, 2004

Road Trip to Nagarjuna Sagar dam: A Journal

I woke up at 05:30 am yesterday and started wondering, when was the last time I did that. I had slept only at around 2:00 am, so I was sleep deprived, and worried that I might not be able to enjoy the trip. But my mind felt pretty fresh, so after having a cold shower, I went to office with my roommate(technically, flatmate), to meet three of our colleagues whom we went with. They asked us to come at 06:30 but they came only at 07:15. Till then we played some nice games of TT.

We started at 07:20, filled up petrol, and asked the guys there for the route. We actually knew the route from Hyderabad, but did not know which road we should take to get out of Hyderabad. They told us the route and then as soon as we hit that road, we stopped over and had breakfast- south indian staple diet- idly, vada, dosa. Then, we started off on our journey on the beautiful road to Nagarjuna Sagar. It is one straight road with no big curves or turns. One straight smooth road. Except for a couple of ditches, there was no hindrance whatsoever. We did the stretch of 160 km in just a little over than 2 hours.

We then went to the AP Tourism information center to find out about the places of tourist interest around Sagar(that's what most people there call it). They told us that there would be a light show at Ethipothala waterfalls, which is around 17km from the dam, in the evening. There is a buddhist monastery and a museum on an island near the dam. We had to take a jetty to reach there and it took forty five minutes. Before going there, we went to a few places close to the dam and took pictures and had lot of fun. We went to a broken bridge and also climbed down one side of the dam. Then we had lunch and got on to the jetty.

They told us that the last boat from the island will leave at 05:00 pm, so we went around the museum very leisurely, but then at around 04:15 some security guards shouted, "saab, the last boat is about to leave", so we had to leave (I was cursing the guys incharge of the boat for having given us wrong information) without having seen the monastery, which I really wanted to visit, because I really like the serenity, peace and beauty inside a buddhist monastery(I had once been to one such monastery in Mussorie).

After coming back from the island we went on a small, round, row boat (they call it parisal in Tamil) till the dam and got back. It was a nice experience but water seeped in to the boat slightly and wet my pant. My friends shot me from the back(obviously without my knowledge) and this made a superb photo. (i wasn't too happy about it but thought it was really funny).

Then we went to the falls, saw the light show and got back to have dinner. After dinner we drove back to Hyderabad. Again, during this drive, yours truly provided a lot of amusement and humour to his fellow passengers, at his own cost. (now, stop laughing!!..let me tell you, this doesn't happen too often).

We got back home late in night and had a good night's sleep.

I'll put up the photos soon, somewhere on the net, and give the link on my blog.

Till then, one advice from my side- Visit Nagarjuna Sagar with a group of friends. It's great fun.

Word of caution: It was really hot yesterday, so whenever you go, make sure you do not wear anything thicker than cotton!!

Trivia: It is the largest masonry dam in the world. It has 9 gates for irrigation, 11 for power, and 26 gates for the reservoir. (the number of gates info was provided by our parisal man)

3 Comments:

Blogger Binoy said...

Thanks for the great blog.I was looking for such a detailed itinerary. Just in time.

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