A day at Warangal

It has been almost a week since I did this trip, but didn’t have the time to write about it. It was Friday (Feb 27th) when I decided to go for this trip, just to break free from the very monotonous schedule of mine. I knew I had to go somewhere, but where was the question. Went to Google and tried to find out places near Hyderabad. The best place that I could find was the “Kakatiya Dyanasty capital — Warangal”. As per some websites Warangal had some good tourist attractions that could make a good day trip. I wanted to make this trip a bike trip, but alas no more bike trips. Had to google around to zero in on places to visit and then google maps to get familiar with the city of Warangal. I had planned to go for this trip alone, but luckily Nitant was also interested to come. What more, plans ready and we were leaving the next morning.

It was a saturday morning and we started at around 5 am from our room. Reached Secunderabad station by 5.30, we had planned to go by the Krishna Exp, scheduled at 6 am. But the look of the queue at the ticket counter made us re-think about the next train at 7.30. Nitant went ahead and got the tickets via a local and 20 rs extra. Boarded the train and off we went, it was the first time that Nitant travelled in a general compartment. Boy no need to thank me I had my share long back. We reached Warangal at around 9 am. Found a local S/W engg who helped us plan the city travel. Warangal is a very small city, you can get to any place from any place in a shared auto for just about 6-7 rs !!!

First it was the Bhadrakali temple, reached there by 9.30 am. Read a lot about this temple on various websites and blogs, but it turned out to be a dissapoinment. The temple is a good one but far below my expectations. It had a very beautiful goddess Kali idol, the one with 8 hands and each hand having a weapon. It was a nice place and had a small lake next to it, where some local school children were on a picnic.

 

 

Nitant @ Bhadrakali temple

 

 

 

 

Me @ a lake near Bhadrakali temple

Next was the thousand pillar temple, read even more about it and after the last dissapointment, wanted this to be a hit. We had a quick breakfast and were there by 10 am. It was again a nice temple but again a dissapointment, we wanted it to be a big temple so that we could spend some time here, as there was only more place on our travel list.

The temple is a good example of Kakatiya architechture, but most of temple has been destroyed and only about 10 % of it is left now. It was amazingly cool inside the temple, may be due to the heavy granite structure. Nitant as ususal had a nice plan of taking a pic with some school children out there, it gave him the “Swadesh” feeling.

 

Nitant's "Swadesh" Moment

 

Thousand pillar temple, Warangal

Now the question was it was 10.30 and all our travel destinations were over. Only one was left the Warangal fort, which we found after a  few enquiries, that it will also be a flop. So we had to plan for something else, a few calls later we had two more destinations, Yadagirigutta or Ramappa temple. We went for Yadagirigutta as it was enroute to Hyderabad.

Boarded a n APSRTC “express” bus to Bhongir, and after 2 hrs and 30 mins we were there at Bhongir. During the bus journey found some interesting facts about Nitant, that guy is also a traveller like me Yadagirigutta was about 10 kms from here. After a quick lunch boarded an auto to the temple. Bhongir has a fort there, but we were too tired and it was a hot afternoon to go for the fort which was atop a hill. Yadagirigutta Devasthanam is actually a Laxminarasimha temple atop a hill. It was a quick visit through the temple and we were back at Bhongir by 5 pm. Oh yes almost forgot about Nitant’s encounter the fortune teller at the temple, the ones with the parrot. Well we knew the fortune teller lied, but those were some plesant lies

From Bhongir we boarded one more APSRTC express and were back at Hyderbad by 7 pm. Overall it was a nice trip, I was missing that spirit of travel and got a lot of it and found a nice travel buddy Will be travelling a lot more now…