Enjoying the Essence of Mallela Theertham

Going to Mallela Theertham has been my dream for a long time, but due to some or the other reasons, it would just get postponed. Having the travel bug caught on to me, I do browse a lot and try to find out locations that I can visit with my friends over weekends, or if not, then on my own.  During one such event, I came across one of the clubs organizing a day’s trekking trip to Mallela Theertham.  In that spur of the moment, I decided that I would go ahead with this trip. I spoke to one of friends, who readily agreed to join. We discussed and decided that he would pick me up from my residence and from there we would jointly go to the meetup location.  As the proverb goes, “Man proposes, god disposes”, my friend called me a week before the trip and informed that he would not be able to make this trip as he would be traveling to Bangalore on an official trip.  I saw my dream of going to this place going up in smoke right in front of my eyes, and it did not take much time for me to drown my mood in a sad state. 

 

My friend must have sensed the change in my mood, as he immediately told me that some of his other friends are also going and he would request them to pick me up.  Viola, I was back in good mood and all my planning started moving in gear 2. One could literally hear all the clogs of mind working overtime….

Finally, the day came, and I was up before the alarm went off at 3 AM.  The meetup time scheduled at 5:30 AM as we all had to board the bus and leave Hyderabad by 6:15 AM. My friend’s friend came and picked me up by 5 AM and we were on the way to Hyderabad Central, Punjagutta. We reached there bang on time and we got to meet other people who had joined us on this trip.  Believe it or not, the group set a kind of record by reaching the meetup place, well before the said time.  Finally, the organizer turned up with the vehicle and we all boarded the bus to make a journey of 170 or so kms.

Before we set out for this trip, I browsed the net for some information on this place. Since, I like to learn and understand the history of the places that I visit, I started to dig in and devour whatever information that I could lay hands on.  While browsing, I got know that “Nallamala” word is derived from Tamil word, which is equivalent to “Good Hills”, which stretches from through Kurnool, Mahabubnagar, Guntur, Prakasham and Cuddapah districts of  the state of Andhra Pradesh and runs parallel to the Coromandel Coast for about 430 kms. The forest stretch is between the Rivers Krishna and Pennar. The hills are between the range of 520 metres and 1100 metres above sea level. The height of the waterfall is 150 feet and is really an awesome sight to behold as it falls.  

 The rocks found here are ages old and attributed to volcanic activities many hundreds of millions of years ago. During monsoons, rainwater does not percolate because of these volcanic rocks and generally run off the mountains in to the Gundlakamma River which is the largest river to originate from these mountains. Since the water does not percolate down into the soil nor they are stagnated, the forest is filled with dry shrubs, bushes, and dwarf trees, but the flora near the waterfall are lush, dense and green bushes and trees.

Though we did not see any wild animals, but it is believed that one can see the tigers near these waterfalls during the summer months. Apart from these, one can spot leopards and some small wild animals.  Since these forest is away from human habitation, one can see various birds, which come to roost during winters.

The Nallamala forest is a treasure trove of legends and folklores. The folklores state that these forest were the places where sages used to come and meditate and is believed that Lord Shiva had appeared before his devotees. It is believed that these waterfall has healing properties for skin ailments.

 The cold January morning, had us wrapping up our jackets around ourselves. We decided that we would stop for breakfast on the way and also pack our lunch from the same location. With the decision made, we all decided we would have a quick sleep, since it was quite early and dark. Though, most of us went back to sleep, but few us could not resist opening up the windows and enjoying the feel of chillness on our faces, and ofcourse the cameras were on clicking sphere. 

We reached our breakfast location, and we all parked ourselves in our respective chairs. Breakfast orders were given, though we had limited choices, still we went ahead. With that job done, introductions were made by each of us.  We had people from varied backgrounds and each had some or the other experience to share with us.  Over the laugh and chatter, we had our breakfast and garama garam chai with ginger ka tadka. Also, we packed our lunch, picked up water bottles as we were told that we will not be able to get fresh water to drink. Feeling energized and fresh, we all got back into the bus. Since we all had some rest, we started to play antakshari. No one bothered who was singing nicely or not, it was mixture of beautiful singers, bathroom singers and even hummers also joined in.  The language was not the concern, we had songs in Hindi, Tamil & Telugu. What a fun it was…songs ranging from 1950 till date….

On the way, we decided to break our journey to check out Dindi reservoir. The beauty of the place cannot be defined.  As the saying goes, a picture is worth thousand words, here it comes.

 We spent about 30 minutes there, enjoying the beauty of the place. We had a quick photography sessions. As an individual, I felt that 30 minutes was not enough to do justice to the place.  

But our destination was Mallela Theertham, so we did not have much choice there.  So we came down from the top of reservoir, and got into the bus to proceed to our decided destination. Our bus took the left at the Vatavarlapalli village and then we drove through the village.  The village with its own atmosphere of mud roads, small school, electrical poles, but not all houses having electrical connections, small shops selling some or the other sweetmeats. The drive through the village brought back the nostalgic memories of my ancestors’ village which I had visited about a year back. Finally, our bus reached Mallela Theertham. 

We all jumped out of the bus as school kids who have come for a picnic. We took few minutes to get attuned to the environment and then we all decided to have some warm up session, before starting the trek. We invented a game where each one of us have to introduce yourself and do five steps of exercise which would be followed by everyone.  But, there was a condition attached to it…no one can repeat any of the exercise steps, which was done by someone else.  It was such a fun that we had great time playing this game. We were about 20 people, and imagine the 20 exercise steps done.

Once done, we all started towards the falls. To reach the first waterfalls, which has proper fencing, where most of the visitors spend their time can be reached after you cross some 350 steps or so. Apart from this, we have 7 small waterfall inside the forest, which we had planned to trek. These falls are located inside the Nallamala forest, which is quite enchanting.
Walking down the 350 steps towards the forest gave us a view of the forest from the top. But, the beauty of the forest astounded us as soon as step down from the last step and walked towards the forest.   

The lush green forest gave me a peek of Robert Forst’s words - ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep’ and its actual sense of understanding. Since it was the month of January, the walk through the walk was too good. There are no set path through the forest, we had to find our way. The criss-cross routes through the trees and suddenly coming to stop to view the cascading waterfall cannot be defined in words.

We walked the forest, climbed the rocks, waded through water, fell in water just to reach the last of the waterfall. Once we reached there, we decided it was time for us to take a quick lunch break and get wet time.  Lunch over, then we had fun under the water. After spending ample amount of time under the waterfall and letting the camera do the job, we had to head back.  Soaked with the water and beauty of place had all of us in entranced mood, but we had to sweat ourselves back to reach our bus stop. Climbing back those 350 steps felt like tedious tasks for us.  But somehow we made.  The trip had literally snapped our energy levels and as soon as we got back into our bus, we all dropped dead and dozed off. On the Srisailam highway, about 7 PM, we stopped to have tea and hot chilli pakoras.  They felt awesome after the grueling walk up.  We reached Hyderabad Central at about 10 PM. Though the trip ended at 10 PM, but I made some great friends and the day was well spent for me.

The group that trekked through the Mallela Theertham forest