Family trek to Beautiful Sahastrakund Falls

Sahastrakund waterfall, another one of the waterfall which I have never heard about. I tried to Google for more information about this place, but could not find much.  I happened to see a video on this place, with gurgling water cascading down.  Soorya, my friend who happens to be a lover of waterfalls and has a knack of discovering some unknown territories, planned a trip to Sahastrakund. This time, my family also joined in his trip.  My kids, aged 10 & 6 were all geared up and excited to go on his trip.  When I informed them, they would need to walk for almost 6Kms, they agreed easily. On August 30^th, 2015, the trip was planned.  Soorya had taken care of our travel tickets and as usual, he had planned everything and shared with all.

Very little details known about Sahastrakund waterfalls, I tried look up in the Google, but did not come up with much information. Sharing whatever information, I could dig and gorge on...:-)

Sahastrakund waterfalls is at a distance of 4.5 km from Islahpur village, 60 km from Nirmal, 100 km from Nanded, 116 km from Adilabad and 282 km from Hyderabad, Sahastrakund Waterfalls is a nice waterfall located in Nanded district of Maharashtra. Sahastrakund Waterfall is an amazing waterfall on the Penganga River, a tributary to Godavari River at Murli village. The water falls can be visited throughout the year, though monsoon is the best season. 

The water drops from a height of 50 feet to form the breathtaking waterfalls. The rock pattern in surroundings of the falls is also interesting, as the black rock appears like a metal. The water force is quite high during monsoons and not advised to get into the water.

There are two temples near the falls on both sides of the river. The ideal time to visit the waterfall is during monsoon (August to October).  

From Nirmal, the waterfall can be reached via Dhani, Swarna & Islahpur. The road from Nirmal is average and can get worse during heavy rains. Public transportation is limited to this place from Nirmal (one bus that runs four times a day). There is also a railway station (Sahastrakund Railway Station) which is half km from Islahpur and 5 km from the waterfall. This station is connected with Hyderabad, Nagpur, Nanded and Adilabad.

Since it was a day’s trip for us, we did not much luggage, just the required things in our backpack. We ensure that we carried extra set of clothes as it was a waterfall and we all were sure to have fun in the water.  Apart from these, we carried some snacks to munch for the kids on the way.  Since we had our train, Krishna Express at 9 PM from Secunderabad station. We decided to take the public transport bus near our place, which is 26 Kms away from the Secunderabad. We started about 6 PM in the evening, we waited for almost 45 minutes to get our bus. The travel which normally takes an hour to reach its destination, even during the peak of traffic, that was worse.  It was about 8:30 PM and we were still stuck at Tarbund stop, which is about 20 minutes away from the station.  We knew that we would never make it to the station, with the kind of traffic that was there on that day, and mentally prepared ourselves that we may miss this trip. 

 The only solution for us to try get out of bus and see if we can get an auto or something which will help us to reach the station in time. With that in mind, we jumped off the bus at the signal, crossed the road and took the next available auto.  Meanwhile, Soorya had called me twice and told me that they are already at the station.  He provided us the coach number, seat number and the platform number where we can board the train.    The auto wala took over from there, we do not know what road he took, and it was 5 minutes to 9 PM, when we reached the station. It was just mad rush for us to catch the train. All four us, just ran and got in the train, as it was leaving the station. It was touch and go for us. You should have seen the grin on our face…

Finally, we got settled, introduced ourselves around.  We found that there were two boys in our group of the same age group of my kids.  The kids got introduced, shared Mogins cupcake to cement their friendship. Some of us had got dinner, so we had quick dinner and decided to call off the day. We were told that the train stops at the Sahastrakund station about 3:30 AM in the morning.  Thankfully, our train was slightly delayed and the station at 4:00 AM morning.  My son was pretty wound up that he was up by 2 AM and every half hour, he would tap me ask me if the station has come.  The moment, we told him, we are approaching, he could not hide his excitement, he was immediately got down, ensured that his sister was wide awake.  The train stops for 10 minutes, we quickly made our exit from the train. We grouped together, started walking out of the platform. From the station, we had to walk about 6 kms to reach the waterfalls. 

Since, it was early morning hours, it was difficult for us to get any mode of transport for the kids. It was pitch dark, with no streetlights, so we had to pull out our flashlights to We found that a small shop had its doors open, which was quite a surprise for us. I peeked in, picked up water bottles and few more munchies along chocolates. By the time I made the payment, started to walk, I found group had covered quite a distance.  Pavan, who had stopped at the shop along with me to pick up water bottles, picked up pace to rejoin the gang that was marching in the dark. 

On the way, we had stray dogs barking at us, as if we were the intruders, who have shaken them from their slumber. The roads were full of potholes, filled with rain water.  We had to be careful while walking, it was nice brisk morning walk for us with jokes, talks and lot of leg pulling. With the first morning light, we were reached the waterfalls. As we walked towards the elevated ramp, we found there are two temples on both sides. You can have darshan, if you want to. From the elevated ramp, we saw the waterfall in its full glory, like a mini Niagara waterfalls. It was just beautiful, I am falling short of words to describe the views that was breathtaking. 

For about an hour or so we stayed around the elevated the bridge, basking the beauty of the waterfall and tranquility around the place. Around 7 AM, we decided to have our breakfast before proceeding to the other side of waterfall. With that decision we all walked back to the entry point of the elevated ramp, where we had seen small shack, kind of eatery run by a family.  We had hot, spicy batata poha along with sweet tea. As soon as we finished our breakfast, we started to walk towards the other side of the falls. 

To reach the other side of the waterfall, you need to cross a bridge that is built across the river, should say about a kms or so from the shack. There is no road that we found, we walked through open rocky, muddy terrain to reach bridge. I noticed that bridge was complete, we could actually get down on the pillars to sit and enjoy the view for few minutes. This walk through the terrain and bridge was refreshing, we took our time to click pictures. 

Once we reached the other side of the falls, we girls and the kids did not need coaxing to run towards the water. Soorya informed us that the force of watre was high, as it was close to the waterfall. We did notice that the rocks are sharp and slippery, we had to be very careful while getting into the water. We spent about an hour in here, then decided that we needed a safer location for all of us to have fun in water. For that reason, we walked back towards the other side of bridge. On reaching there, we found the banks were muddy, and for about few feet, it was covered by algae and moss. In another 15 minutes, we knew, we need to find another location. Soorya, went ahead, got down near the bridge, tested the depth and gave us a green signal to come down. That’s it…we all ran like crazy nuts who have not seen water for ages… 

 

We played in the water till lunch time, dried and changed our clothes. We all started back towards the Sahastrakund station.  Since we all were exhausted to the core, and with four kids, we found it would be difficult for us to walk back.  We decided to hire an auto who could take us towards the station.  We wanted two to three autos, but we got only one auto, so it was decided that the ladies along with kids with go ahead in the first batch, then auto wala will come back to pick up the remaining people.  With that decision, we got into the auto.  But believe me that was the worst auto drive for us because the route taken by the auto guys had craters, not just potholes. At many places, we had to get down and push it…well that was fun. Somehow, we managed to reach market area. We requested the auto driver to wait for us as we wanted to have lunch before proceeding to the station.

Since, it is a small town, we did not have much option.  We found one decent place to eat, ordered masala rice, poori and aloo sabzi to eat.  Unfortunately, the poori was not cooked properly, so we could not eat them. We paid the bill, then got into the auto to proceed to the station.  The auto driver asked us to inform the remaining team members, that he will not be able to pick them up as the road was bad.  We somehow managed to inform them.  The guys walked all the way to station after finishing their lunch. We waited for our train, which was scheduled at 4 PM from Sahastrakund station. 

Since we did not get direct train to Hyderabad, we had to break our journey at Mudkhed. The train journey to Mudkhed was just fun, where we all discussed the pictures taken.  We would swap the cameras & smartphones to see the pictures taken.  Arif's photography was awesome, (let me mention it is here, he is a great photographer and has trekked with Soorya in too many treks). 

Arif had taken some of the pictures of us in the water.  That chotu camera (I forgot the name, I will try getting the name from Arif) has done amazing job. It was short trip to Mudkhed, before the blink of our eyes, we were all getting down. 

At Mudkhed, we had enough time to kill as we waited for the connecting train to come in. Finally, we all boarded the train, found that our seats were spread across the entire compartment.   We noticed that the our compartment had only few people, so we decided to sit together, play antakshri (complete mix of Hindi, Telugu songs), boys v/s girls.  Omg!! What fun it was….At Basar, we had to breakup as other passengers started to board the train.   

It was about 9 PM (do not remember the exact time), we all reached Secunderabad, bye to say goodbye for us. We ensured that it was not a goodbye, we exchanged numbers and still touch with most of the group members. 

Another beautiful memory made, with another set of strangers…

More details on Sahastrakund: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahatrakund_Waterfall

Photo Credit: Arif, & Soorya

A day’s trip to Awesome Bogatha falls

Most of my friends who are seasoned trekker, always said, trekking in the rains gives an awesome feeling. I have never done that and was really not sure that how many of us would really love to try that.  The moment, you think about the rain, you just feel like snuggling yourself with a nice book, aadrak waali chai and hot pakoras or take a football, play as you get wet…Well, my dream of getting wet and trekking came true, when I went to a place called, Bogatha Falls. It was quite a coincidence that it was raining all through the day in and around Bogatha falls. 

August 15, 2015 was as usual and that Sunday was something that I was looking forward too as I had scheduled myself for a trip to Bogatha falls, in Khammam district. Honestly speaking, I had never heard about this waterfall, that too within the radius of 500 Kms. According to the plan shared, it was a day trip.  We were scheduled leave on Saturday night, trek to that waterfall on Sunday and back on Monday morning.  This was a complete new group of people with whom I had clubbed to make this trip.  The trip organizer, Soorya was the only person, with whom I was constantly in touch. 

Soorya had meticulously planned everything for the entire group and trip was awesome not just because it was planned well, but the group of people who had joined me in this trip. According to the plan, our train was scheduled to leave Secunderabad station at 11PM.   I had an early dinner and then took a bus to Punjagutta, where Soorya had asked me to meet him.   Soorya and Atul met me at the Punjagutta circle and then took me to Vamsi’s place.  There, I met most of the people who were traveling with me. They had dinner and then after sometime we all booked a cab and left for the station.   At the station, I met few more people and then we all boarded the train.    The initial few hours was completely hellos and hi and get together kind of time for all us.   Most of us were yapping away till wee hours of morning.   Few of us decided to catch with sleep for few hours. The entire travel route was chilly and it was feeling good.

 About 4 AM, my mobile alarm was ringing on top of its voice, telling me it’s time to freshen before disembarking at the station.  The enthusiasm level were at the top most level and I was eagerly waiting to get started. The entire gang got down at the station – Bhadrachalam Road.   

Since it was quite early, we all wanted to have a hot cup of tea before starting towards the falls. As soon as chai was done, we all walked out of station.   

Soorya informed us that since it is quite a distance, he had arranged a maxi cab for all us to the reach the closest point to the falls. The route that we took to the falls was: Bhadrachalam Road > Cherla > Venkatapuram  > Cheekupalli Stream > Koyaveerapuram (Bogatha Falls), was only beautiful, but scenic.  The drilling rain, hillocks, & greenery was worth the drive towards the falls.  Our Smartphones and cameras must have groaned under the amount of time we clicked pictures on the way.  

 Around 8 AM, at Cherla, we decided to take a quick break to fill our tummy. We had a good breakfast of dosa/idli, chutney and sambhar, along with piping hot coffee.  Some of us decided to have poori& sabzi.  Once we were done with breakfast, we freshened up.  Our breakfast point was a family run eatery, and just right behind the eatery, they had their living premises.  They were kind enough to allow us to use the washroom.  It was about 11ish, when reached the bridge, which still under construction, we decided to change into shorts and t-shirts and start walking towards to the falls. 

The walk through the open lands with puddle was just fun.  Those mud puddles, allowed the child amongst us to come out, jump and play. What awesome feeling it was!! Given an option, I would redo it without a blink of an eye.  As we neared the water, the sounds of gushing waterfall was thunderous and it goaded us to move forward.  WOW!! Ooh!! Omg!!...well these were the reactions that we had when we saw the waterfall. We were like kids and were all diving into the water to have fun. Because of the rains, the waterfall had grown into huge magnitude and was gushing forward in full force, which could easily pull a person if they are not careful.  We spent about 3 or so hours in water, playing, trying to swim in the natural body,  (honestly, I was found it tough to swim in here, though I know swimming pretty well – but still tried, went inside the water, got pulled up…;-)). We had an amazing photo session.  Pavan, who is an amateur photographer amongst us, was totally into his camera, he was least bothered if his camera was getting wet while taking photographs. He took some of the amazing shots to create the memories which will be long cherished by us, wherever we go…

Once done with playing and photography session, we had to come out. Though none of us wanted this session to get over, but time was crucial for us.  So we had a bye for that time and move out of water.  We all slowly started walking back towards our maxicab.  As soon as we reached our maxicab, we all changed out of wet clothes and started to munch on the snacks that we had with ourselves. Since we all come quite close to Bhadrachalam, we decided to make a pit stop at the temple.  We all had a good darshan of Lord Rama and then all boarded the maxicab. 

It was almost 7 PM, and we had our bus back to Hyderabad at 9 PM. We all decided to stop for dinner, at a nice restaurant. After dinner we had cake cutting as one of group member’s birthday was there the next day.  It was good party time for us.  Dinner done, we all boarded the maxicab. The driver dropped us at the bus stop.  Boarding the bus back to Hyderabad was the most poignant moment for us as we were still in daze, thinking about the waterfall.  But as it goes the saying, all good things have to come to an end, we had to accept the same. But still trip was awesome…

Met, made some amazing friends during this trip.  Now, am looking forward to another trip with this gang again….

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