Trip to Warangal…. Abode of Kakatiyas

Continuing from my previous article, Bhongir...the brooding fort. Must be around 8:30 or 9 am, breakfast over and our cab on Warangal highway...The morning sun, pleasent and beautiful, and the day held the promise of making our trip a great one....

Our cab was loaded with muncies, fruits and I do not even remember what all was there...just to ensure that no one complained of being hungry. While some of us munched on, some dozed off, while many of us chattering like school kids who were on a school picnic. The drive to Warangal was great, and our first pit stop was 1000 Pillars Temple. Though now, you can see only few pillars, many of them have fallen. This entire temple is looks like chariot and has a temple for Lord Shiva, Vishnu, and Surya. The moment you enter the temple, on your left you can see a huge Shiva Lingam, very beautiful. The temple has beautifully carved pillars, roof, and walls, and slabs. It is unique and each carving seemed to far more complicated than the one we had finished viewing. This Archaeological Survey of India site, is trying to get few more beautifully carved pillars back to its original count. We got so engrossed in the carvings, that we forgot the time that just went by and suddenly, we felt that we all were hungry and badly needed to have a lunch. We decided the place called Ashoka or something, sorry am not sure about the name, we packed ourselves into the cab and off we went for lunch.

Lunch session over, now we all decided to see the Warangal Fort, for which we all so enthu about. We reached there in 15 minutes. While entering the fort, we went through the huge gates, Cor, from our US office was really amazed. He mentioned that he had been to many forts all over the Europe, but this was first fort where he had driven through a fort!! Though there is nothing like to be called as fort there, but the ruins of the fort has been kept. I was informed by a person there, that invaders destroyed the entire fort and whatever you can see is the only the ruins of majestic fort that was once there. This entire place has huge garden and we all sat down and had great time. We took our sweet time to view the broken pieces of the fort, but somehow I found it so interesting and I was totally engrossed. Each piece had a story to tell. If it could talk, then we would have heard the entire story of the fort. Next to this place, was an old temple, and down some rooftop kind of structure.

Kaktiyas built the Warangal fort during the 13th century. It is believed that though this fort is not not huge as Golconda fort, but it was impregnable. We saw that the there four beautifully carved gateways and can you guess we tried to analyse how they were built....While returning back from fort, we crossed the Khush Mahal, built by Shitabh Khan. Since we did not have much time, we could not stop over and see what was inside. We moved on to see Bhadrakali temple, situated on a hilltop between Hanamkonda and Warangal. The image of Goddess Kali is embedded in the stone and was beautiful. It is belived that once Goddess was fierce looking, but over a period of time has mellowed down. The temple is located at the banks of a lake and I do not know the name of the lake.

We finished all these places by 8:30 PM and by that time we all were dead tired. By the time we all reached it was half past midnight. Though tired, we had a great day and now we are planning for our next trip. You guys will see it soon....