6th Dec, people of our country remember it as a Black Day in the Indian history, but our group would remember it as a day that was spent beautifully. As usual, we planned a day ahead. We packed up all the required eatables, water and all the other basic requirements that we would need, as we had a kid of three with us. The group had four energetic people and a hyperactive kid. We started quite early, my husband, Shiv, son Aadhithya, (sleepyhead), and me left our home at 5:30 AM. On the way we picked up one of other group member, Shilpa, and then set off to pick up the last member – Ashwin. It was almost 6.00AM, when we were all on the way to Wargal.
The route that we took to Wargal was a pleasant ride for us. The fresh and crisp winter morning air, sounds of birds, was something we enjoyed all through the way. The route that we took was Secunderabad > Vikrampuri > Alwal > Ratnalayam > Wargal. Once you cross the city limits, you can feel that you are entering the rural areas of our country. Both the sides of the road had lush green fields, and it was a good drive. The road to Wargal is a straight long drive, after crossing Ratnalayam, after few kms, you would see an arch, with a beautiful Saraswati statue. You need to take a turn there, and from there the road is pretty narrow and you will literally feel and see the village atmosphere. On the way to the temple, the entire place was a feast for us as the entire was lush green and we also happened to cross small ponds full of lotus, which was quite rare for us.
The temple is atop a small rock. You need to walk about 100 steps to reach the temple at the top. On the way to the Saraswati Devi temple, we visited the Ganesha temple. The Ganesha temple was not at all crowded and we had a good darshan. From there we proceed to the main deity temple. When we entered the temple, we could hear the sounds of veda chants coming from nearby. Since this temple is not so popular, there was hardly anyone at the temple, except the temple people. The aarti timings for the deity and us entering the temple were beautifully coincided. After the aarti, we stayed back for sometime, had the prasadam and we just enjoyed the temple for some more time. While coming down, we came across vedpadshala, where boys of all age groups were reciting vedas.
We walked down to have the darshan of Lord Shani. Aadhithya and Shiv did some rock climbing, and we all just lazed around for sometime in the sand and then we decided to start back to Ratnalayam. Before we hit the highway for the Ratnalayam temple, we stopped the car and had a hot cuppa of chai.
While driving back to Ratnalayam, we decided to be little adventurous and took a turn on the left, which was off the main highway. We drove for sometime and then stopped in the middle of the jungle and had a photo session. Shilpa and me were busy looking for some wild flowers. One red wild flower caught our attention, as it was beautiful red bud, but unfortunately we do know the name. After the photo session we started again for Ratnalayam. We reached Ratnalayam, had darshan of Lord Balaji and we did archanai. We had the prasadam and then spent sometime at the children play area, where Aadhithya had a great time.
It was almost 9:45 AM or so and we all started to feel hungry. We started from the temple and started looking around to find a place where we could have a good picnic. But unfortunately, we could not find any such place, so we decided that we would go straight to the lake Shameerpet, which we had crossed on the way to Wargal. We reached the lake and look around for nice and clean place to sit and enjoy our breakfast. We had sandwiches, along with biscuits and chips and then downed it with apple juice. The place was so beautiful that we all were bewitched. Aadhithya, was so thrilled to see so much of water around that he got into the water and played around for sometime. We three adults, did nothing, we just gazed around and were enjoying the beauty of the nature. The sun was also good, just mild enough to keep us happy. We had been sitting there for a long time and we all having been eyeing a small temple kind of structure on top of a hill. We all decided that we will drive down there and see where it is. We asked a local person how to reach that place and then we set off. The ride down the place was good, the road leading the temple was neatly laid out, and so the drive was not a bumpy one as one would think and you could drive till the temple entrance. It was again the Lord Balaji temple. We had darshan, and then we walked across the road.
There was a cave kind of structure, made of two rocks. Inside that cave, we saw that there was a statue of Lord Murgan. We spent sometime inside the cave, discussing how one can do camping here. Can you believe we had almost decided to camp out there?? Then we moved out of the cave and went behind the cave formation. There were huge boulders and we did some rock climbing and again we had photo session. The place was peaceful, cool and green and we had no intention of leaving the place. We had spent almost 2 hours there, but still we were not ready to leave the place. We had crossed lunch time and none of us wanted to miss out the lunch. So we all got back into the car and came down the other way to touch the highway.Then we started towards city and we thought we will have good lunch at a Punjabi dhaba, but unfortunately, we could not find a place where we all could stop and have food. So finally we decided to have food at Yatri Nivas, though unwillingly. It was almost 2:45 PM, we placed the order for the food and by the time we finished it was 4:00 PM. After lunch, we all went back home, tired, but satisfied as the day had went off well.
