Tiger trails…Tadoba

Last weekend, my friend and me were having a discussion about vacations, places covered, what places would be preferred and why. I did not have to think twice, before I said “Nature” and “Tiger”.  My friend was flabbergasted with my answer, and she looked at me as if I have lost few screws while on my way to meet her. I just gave her smile, showed her a list of wildlife areas that I wanted to visit. In my list, I had listed this place called – “Tadoba”.  One of my friends who had been to this place told me that in Tadoba, it is not about sighting the Tiger, but how many Tigers do you sight is the question.  Honestly, I did not understand when he told me this sentence. But, now after being there I can vouch on that what he said was true. Before, I get with my trip details, let’s get into history of the place.  Am sure, you will be able to find loads of information on the Google.  But still, here we go…

According to the local legend, Taru was village chief, who was killed in a mythological encounter with a tiger. The tribals erected a shrine in his memory under a large tree on the shores of Lake Tadoba, and giving birth to the name ‘Tadoba’ to the local jungle. The river Andhari rambles through this dense forest, hence the name - “Tadoba Andhari” Tiger reserve. This place is located in the Chandrapur district of Maharashtra and this forest happens to be one of the poldest in our country. The Tadoba Reserve contains some of the best forest tracts and is endowed with rich biodiversity. For more details, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadoba_Andhari_Tiger_Project

With the long weekend approaching during the fag end of March 2014, ensured that we went on tiger trails to Tadoba. This place has been on our “To visit places” for a long time, somehow this would go down the list and we would end up visiting some other reserve forest to have a glimpse of Tiger. We researched about Taboda, found that it can be reached via Chandrapur. Chandrapur is not very far from Hyderabad, just about 400 Kms roughly, which would mean clearly 7 to 8 hours of drive.  We researched all options of reaching the place, found that we can drive by taking the following route: Hyderabad > Karimnagar Highway > Mancherial-Chandrapur.  Since Shiv and me were in no mood to drive all the way, we decided that train is the best option. 

In the month of January 2014, we booked our tickets to Chandrapur in Secunderabad to Patna Express, which departs from Secunderabad station at 10 AM in the morning and reach Chandrapur, at 16:48 PM.  We decided to stay near Moharli gate, as we had our safaris’ booked from this gate. Hence, we ensured that our rooms are close by this gate. On the d-day, we had booked the cab @ 8 AM to take us to the Secunderabad station.  We reached at 9:30 AM and boarded the train.  We was peaceful journey, nothing much to say.  I did happen to meet ISB professor, who was quite taken with our trip to Taboda.  We did talk about his travels that he has made and I found he had covered most of the reverse forest of our country. Honestly, I would have loved to be in his shoes, but everyone has their own share of travels to hold that kind of experience.

At about 4:450 PM, we reached Chandrapur station. As we approached the station, the cab driver called and informed us about the cab details.  As soon as we got down, we started to move towards the cab. The cab driver introduced himself, informed us about the distance that would cover and time that it would take to reach our destination.  We were on the way to Tadoba, while driving through the city, we saw that Chandrapur had fort walls, though I have not found much about it. Neways, I am thinking of seriously digging into the history books to find out more about this fort. Though I have my doubts that it would be in ruins, even though there was a fort once upon a time. 

On the way, we could not resist ourselves to treat ourselves with the local delicacy called – Dabeli pav, which had us drooling over it.  We packed few extras and then off we went right through the coal mines to Tadoba. The drive was a delightful experience for my kids (aged 5 and 9) as they some of the machinery that are used for coal mining. 

Finally, we reached our hotel. Most of the reserve forest in our country have two zones: reserve forest, which we cannot enter without permission, and other part is buffer zone. Our hotel was situated in the buffer zone, and we were about 10 minutes walking distance from Moharli gate. 

By the time, we reached it was getting dark, so our aim was to freshen up, have food and sleep ourselves off. We have booked two safaris, one in the morning and another one in the afternoon. 

At 5:30 AM, our safari driver along with the guide came to pick up at hotel.  The whole night, we could hardly sleep as we were excited to see the tiger. Once we entered the forest, the only thing that came to my mind was Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” poem’s lines…”The woods are lovely, dark and deep…”

The first animal that we saw was Sloth Bear, followed by spotted deers, sambhar, monkeys, and other birds. We even got the view of a tiger tracking its prey, but we did not have any other encounter with the tiger. We waited for almost 3 hours, but no luck so we called it a day as the sun was getting hotter. We came back to our room, freshened up, lunch and took rest. 

Our safari jeep driver informed us that he would be back at 3:30 PM to pick us up. Again we left at 3:30 PM, and then entered the forest. The driver informed us that he would be taking another route, and it was worth the deviation that we took.  We drove through the dirt track and almost missed the tiger, which was sitting in the water. We reversed the jeep, waited for it to come out. It seemed like ages before the tiger decided to come out and man….what a sight it was!! There was pin drop silence, not even kids made a single movement. We were the only people in that entire stretch who had such a beautiful and awesome opportunity to see the “Tiger” at such close counter. We spent almost 30 minutes or so watching the Tiger, till we lost him in the greens of the forest. This was our talking point the entire night.

Next day, we did not have much to do as we had booked our travel back to Hyderabad. We got up leisurely, had good breakfast of batata poha and chai.  With few hours in hand, we decided to have a walk around the buffer zone.  Walk, we did and he happened to see few deers, museum, two leopards that have been caught and kept under lock and key.  We were asked not to go close to the cage as they were dangerous. Neways, it was good walk for us.  We came back to our hotel, got ready to leave.  Lunch done, waiting for the cab, which was delayed by 20 minutes. Neways, we made it to the Chandrapur station in time.  We boarded our train and reached Hyderabad in time for next day work and school.  

Our encounter with the Tiger was awesome, and we cannot forget it in our lifetime.  While coming out of Safari zone, we met a family, who have been traveling regularly to Tadoba to see the tigers.  I was quite caught up with their knowledge of each tiger they had seen.  With a simple picture, they were able to tell us tiger’s name, its generations and how different it was from the rest of others.  Hats of them!!, but unfortunately, I could not collect their contact to keep in touch. 

Hoping to meet more of Tigers as I plan to cover few more... 

Lazing Out @ Horsley Hills

This post has been long overdue; I do not know why I could never sit on this and get it out from its draft mode. Finally, I decided enough is enough and started to pen down all that fun-filled moments that I spent this beautiful place called – Horsley Hills…cool, wet, chill and serene…

When you have a long weekend and you do not feel like being at home, then what do you do? If I were you, then I would pack my backpack and run to nature would be at its best, secluded and beautiful…That’s what we did (Ashwin, Shiv, my kids and me) did. The best part was that we had this place on our mind for a very long time, but whenever we planned it, it would get postponed due to some or the other reason. But, this time we all three adamant that we are going to make to this place come what may...

Horseley Hills, is really not very famous, it is a beautiful virgin hill station in Andhra Pradesh close to Tirupati. It is also known as “Andhra’s Ooty”, and we will talk about its history soon, when we actually reach the place.

It was early Saturday morning; Ashwin was at my home sharp 6 AM to pick us up. I had packed lots of things to eat, as I was sure we had a long way to go with the kids, and yes also I managed to smuggle in a flask of strong hot coffee. We all were set for the trip, and as usual me at the backseat with my notepad where I had made notes about the routes, diversions, eatouts, and what all can be covered during our stay there. And of course, I have a habit (call it bad, if you want to) of making a note of expenses that have been incurred during the trip. That’s the reason; Ashwin and Shiv call me “munimji”.

Horseley Hills is about 500 kms from Hyderabad and we decided to take the Kurnool route to Horseley Hills. We all set out in our Santro and the route that we took was: Hyderabad - Jadcherla - Kurnool - Gooty - Anantapur (on NH7, turn left on NH205) - Kadiri – Horseley Hills. The roads near Kurnool were horrible, and we had to be careful, otherwise the road before that was awesome.

On the way, we stopped to “Ghar” dhaba to have a lunch. We preferred having thali and food was awesome. We refreshed ourselves and moved ahead. We actually missed the turning near Kadri, a small u-turn that we had to take to drive up the Horseley Hills. Once you cross Kadri village, you need to keep you eyes open to see the sign where it says – “Welcome to Horseley Hills” The moment you see the sign, take that turn and viola, you are entering the hills. Drive carefully, as you need to read the signs and enter an archway that takes you through the hairpin bends to reach Horseley Hills. By the time we reached the AP Tourism Hill Resort at Horseley Hills, it was quite late, should be around 8 PM. We were not sure if we would get the rooms or not. We decided to try our luck and asked for the Governor’s Bungalow. Lady Luck was smiling on us and we got the rooms. We drove down to the Bungalow and checked in. Freshened up and we decided to walk down to Haritha Restaurant to have dinner.

There was chillness in the air and I just loved it. It reminded me of my school days, when I used to ride my bicycle to school in the chill weather. After dinner, we walked back as slowly as we could, enjoy the silence…

Next day morning, I am not sure we all got up pretty early, but I was one lazy one out there this time and wanted to sleep for some more time under the warm blanket. Ashwin, Shiv and Adi went for their morning walk and came back all pinky pinky types. They told me that it was worth the effort and they really enjoyed it.

By the time, they came back; I had got up and was ready to start to look around. The place is cut off from rest of the civilization, so a good way to break free from office stress, relax and enjoy oneself with nature. There are few places that you could spend time – Forest area, opposite to Haritha Restaurant, a small temple (little away from the Haritha). And yes they also have activities like adventure sports. Though set up in a small place, but they are maintaining it pretty well.

First thing in the morning, we decided to have breakfast at Devdas, a small eatout just opposite the Haritha restaurant. We loved the hot idlis that were he served for breakfast. After breakfast, we decided to enter the Forest area, where Adi was busy feeding the rabbits, ducks and peacocks. We walked quite a lot and it was nice to see the flowers and nature’s beauty….

This place gets it name from a British collector of Cuddapah – W.D. Horsley. He used to spend his summers at this place. Within the forest area, you can see the place where he used to stay. Next to that bungalow, there is a Eucalyptus tree which is about 150 years old and is believed to plant by Horsley himself.

You get a very beautiful view from this area. The hills, the plateau looked awesome and we just loved it.

Then on an impulse, we decided to drive down the Talakona falls. And we all rushed back to room, picked up a small bag and drove down. We asked for instructions and drove down. As we neared the falls, we heard the waterfall and we all were ecstatic, but it did not last long as reached the falls. All our imagination about the waterfall was broken, when we saw the waterfall - there was not enough water there. Anyways, we discovered another place – I forgot the name, where they had nice log cottages. You can actually stay there and go for jungle safari…

Once we were back to Horseley Hills and spent another day or so lazing around, lapping in whatever Mother Nature had in store for us. Our two days trip was over before we could realize and we had to return home. Before leaving the place, I did a pamphlet, which had the details of booking the room there. I am posting that information for future reference:

For enquiry and reservations contact: Haritha Hill resort, Horsley Hills, Madanpalli, Chitoor Dist, AP. Phone: 08571-279323

Other Central reservation offices:

Office Location	STD Code	Phone	Fax
Bangalore	080	41136373	22385513
Hyderabad	040	65581555, 23450165	23453086
Basheerbagh	040	23298456/57, 657466370
Secunderabad	040	27893100, 27816375
Tirupati	0877	2289120/126/129
Vizag	0891	2788820/21, 98488 13584
Vijayawada	0866	2571393
Kurnool	08518	270104, 273325
Chennai	044	65439987	24353373

Awesome Bidar

Bidar…the name has always attracted me; I do not know the reason why. Finally, my dream of visiting Bidar came true. On July 31, 2010, my friend Ashwin and Srirama called me and informed me that they are planning for Bidar and asked me whether I would be interested. They were little worried as I had just back to normal health after the bout of typhoid. Frankly speaking, I was little bugged with my routine schedule of home, work and then sickness. I wanted to break free from this routine and wanted to let go off myself and enjoy. Since my hubby, Shiv is also one traveling freak…so there were no second thoughts about making this trip. Before we embarked on this journey, we did a through search about the place, eatouts and whatever information we felt is important to know.

On August 01, 2010, Ashwin picked up Srirama and my family from our respective homes. The best part is that from my home location, Bidar is about 115 Kms. We left Hyderabad at 6 AM in the morning, all of us (Ashwin, Srirama, Shiv, my two little ones and I) bundled together in Hyundi Santro. It was nice to feel morning air and being a weekend the roads were empty. We could actually zip through at a comfortable speed.

We took the following route: Kukatpally > Madinaguda > BHEL > Patancheru > Sangareddy > Zaheerabad > Bidar. The route to Bidar was excellent, full of greenery and we enjoyed the drive. The four-lane route was awesome and the morning weather made us feel hungry. Though we had enough eatables, but we were really not ready to binge on them. While searching about information, we had found that on the way about 65 Kms from Hyderabad, there is a Haritha restaurant and we decided to make out pit stop there and have good breakfast. While I ordered breakfast for everyone, my kids (Aditya and Arjitha) along with Shiv, Ashwin and Srirama had a great time in the small play area that they have. Refreshed, we proceeded further.

As mentioned earlier the roads were awesome and we need to cross a jungle area before entering the Bidar town. When we entered Bidar around 10:30 AM, we saw that the roads were cleaner and well maintained, and on our right we saw the fort gate. We had planned all the places we wanted to visit – Water cave Temple – Narshimha Temple, Papanaashi temple – Shiva Temple, Bidar fort, Chaubara, Bahamani tombs, The Madrassa of Mohammed Gawan, Gurudwara, and then do some shopping for Bidriware.

Our first stop we made was at Sri Kshetra Jharni Narsimha temple – a water cave temple dedicated to Lord Narsimha. This temple is situated in a large cave below the Manichoola hills. To reach the entrance of the temple, we had to walk about 50 to 60 steps, and the valley in which this temple is situated is very beautiful. Since we traveled to this place after the rains, it was green all around and was very soothing to our nerves. We had to wade through waist deep water to get the darshan of Lord Narasimha. This temple is believed to the swayambu roopam of the Lord Narashimha and is very powerful.

This was an awesome experience for us, especially wading through chest deep water, with bats and owl hanging within the cave’s rooftop. It took almost 30 minutes to reach the main deity. One of the temple priests told us that one actually take seven turns to reach the Lord and I never realized this until I was told. Amazing fact….

Frankly, speaking I really do not know from where does the water enter this cave. It is believed that this perennial stream of water starts its journey from the foot of the Lord and it has been flowing for a pretty long time, and none of us knew from when.

After a good darshan, we came out and found a nice place to change our clothes, and then we started for the Gurudwara, also known Nanak Jhira Saheb. We started on the route to Gurudwara, but then we saw a board informing us about the Karanja Reservoir.

And as always we started for that place. Rather than taking the right turn for the Gurudwara, we went in straight. The route was so beautiful – full of greenery, you will not believe if I say we started to contemplate if we can get accommodation in the government bunglow, which was pretty close by to the reservoir. But the lady luck was not smiling at us, so we had to abandon our plan and be happy - enjoying the reservoir. We spent sometime there, took some snaps.

Then we started back towards Gurudwara, we asked an auto wala give us directions. But before the Gurudwara, we took a turn left to visit Papanaashi Temple - Shiva temple. We had to drive through that hill-like route to reach the Shiva temple. We stopped the car close to temple premises and then proceed to have darshan.

The legend goes that Lord Rama prayed here when he was coming back from Lanka. He was told that he needs to establish 12 lingas, as he had killed a Brahmin. So Lord Rama started doing that. When he came to this place, he found that Shiv Linga was already established. So he performed the puja here and went ahead...thats the reason it is called Papanaashi Temple.

We had good darshan and did the aatri and then we visited the Hanuman temple nearby and then started for Gurudwara, which is made of marble. Right in front of the Gurudwara, they have a nice water tank, for which the water from the Nanak Jhira (Water Spring) has been directed for pilgrims to have a holy dip.

It is believed that Guru Nanak, when he was touring the place down south, he stopped at Bidar, but when people complained about the scarcity of water. On hearing, about the water issue, Guru Nanak uttered ‘Sat Kartar' touched his wooden sandal, which he was wearing from a nearby hillock, and removed a stone. To the surprised and delight of all, unrest rain of clean sweet drinking water started gushing out.

We spent sometime at the Gurudwara, and then we proceeded to have a lunch. You would lot of chota chota dhabas in the vicinity of Gurudwara. But we decided to have at Rohit restaurant, which was vegan place. Food was excellent, but service was slow.

After lunch, we decided to cover the Bidar fort, Chaubara, Bahamani tombs, The Madrassa of Mohammed Gawan, and then do some shopping for Bidriware. The fort was awesome – 5.5 acres of the place. The entrance to fort itself is grand…You need to keep honking at each turn to avoid accidents

Most of the places inside the fort are kept under lock and key. We got hold of a guide, who showed us around and explained each and every thing. The guide who assisted us was a good one. He explained each and everything, and we found it a beautiful experience. For more information on Bidar fort, refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidar_Fort

At the end of the fort, we tipped the guide handsomely and he seemed to be very happy. It took almost the entire afternoon and it was almost evening that we proceeded to Chaubara, and did some shopping. Chaubara – is a grand old clock tower. Take the right from there and you are in the area, where you would loads of Bidriware shops. We picked few things and we had to bargain a lot. The one thing that caught my attention was – intricate the work, more was the price for the article.

After all the day’s action and fun filled trip, we were exhausted and we decided to turn back to Home Sweet Home….Given a chance we would love to go again…esp to cover the fort again!!

Destinations - What's Hot?

We have so many places in India, that are off-beat and many of us do not even know about them. In this article, I would like to provide some of the destinations that are not so hot, yet hot for the people who love to take not so oft-repeated destinations.

• CHITRAKOOT: "The hill of many wonders" is located peacefully in the northern spurs of the Vindhyas. The Vindhyas which are know for its tranquil forests, placid rivers. Travel to Chitrakoot, to enjoy the tranquility, draw inspiration, from its natural beauty, which has been inspiration to many poets, visionaries for ages together.
• CHIKMAGALUR: Chikmagallur is situated in the Baba Budan hills, which is serene, and calm. This is full of surprises - includes hills, valleys, streams, and snow white coffee blossoms. It is a trekker's delight, with its rugged hills and other adventures. Towards north of Chikmagallur, you have another hill station - Kemmanagundi, where Hebba waterfalls is there.
• NALANDA: Nalanda is situated about 90 Kms from Patna and this happens to be one of the earliest universities of our country. It was a flourishing university with 10000 students and 1500 teachers. It is believed that Hiuen Twang, the Chinese traveller spent three years in this university and has left detailed notes about this university.
• VARKALA BEACH: Varkala beach is situated about 51 kms away from Thiruvananthapuram and is a secluded beach. This beach offers a perfect beach holiday apart from Ayurvedic treatment, Yoga and meditation course. It is called Papnasam beach and lies to the south west coast of India. It is believed that dip in the holy waters of the beach will cleanse you of your sins.
• KANGER VALLEY NATIONAL PARK: This valley is in Chattisgarh and about 34-km long with an average of 6-km in width. The valley is completely hilly and happens to be last few pockets of virgin forests left in the peninsular region. This forest is proposed to be biosphere reserve and has fauna, that includes, such as tiger, panther, wildcat, cheetal, samber, barking deer, wild boar, jackal, langur, rhesus, macaque, sloth bear, flying squirrel, python, hyena, rabbit, crocodile, otter and civet.
• PRAGPUR: This small hill station is hidden away in the Kangra region and is about 4-hour drive from Chandigarh via Ropar and Anandpur Sahib. You can reach this place by train from Pathankot. This heritage village provides panoramic view of Himachal Pradesh and it houses some of famous paintings of Kangra School of paintings.
• TADOBA NATIONAL PARK: This is one of the oldest national parks in Maharashtra. If you love to walk and happen to be a wildlife enthusiasts, then this park should be must go in your list. This place charms you with its splendid flora and fauna, with attractions, such as thousand species of birds, animals, insects, tigers herds of cheetals, sambars, barking deers, chausings, neel gais, sloth bears, Indian bisons, wild dogs, wild boars, leopards, and other inhabitants.
• BENAULIM BEACH: This beach is about 3 to 4 kms away from Margao village in Goa. This place runs between Vasco de Gama and Mobor as a strip of land and has few restaurants, smaller guest houses. You can just sit and enjoy yourself at the beach without any disturbance. You can just walk to the beach, using the walk through between the green paddy fields, palms and other wading birds.
• ANGSANA RESORT & SPA: From Bangalore city, you can reach this place. Tucked away in the western ghats section, it invites you to come and enjoy the curative power of nature ensconced in the lavish greenery and vast space of picturesque Northwest county.
• DEVIGARH: This beautiful 18th century fort is nestled in the Aravali hills of Rajasthan in the Delwara village and commands three main passes into the valley of Udaipur. This fort palace has been renovated and converted into a 39 suite luxury hotel with emphasis on design and detail using local marbles and semi-precious stones.

Orchha - Hidden Treasure

I read an article on Orchha about 2 years ago and I liked the way the author describes this place. If you can let your thoughts run wild, I can bet that, you can actually visualize the place.

ORCHHA -the name spells it all, it means "hidden" and to me was like finding a hidden treasure. Away from the beaten track, this place is about 15 kms from Jhansi. To reach this place, one needs to travel through the dusty roads of Madhya Pradesh, small villages, and long terrains of arid fields. But, I would say its worth the effort and you finally reach Orchha. You can check into Orchha Resorts, which is situated on the banks of the river Betwa. The first thing you notice about the place is that this small town has innumerable temples and palaces that are scattered around. During the 16th and 17th century, Orchha was the capital of the Rajput bundela kings who left behind some of magnificent palaces.

The first place that catches your attention is the Ram Raja temple where Lord Ram is worshipped as King, not as God. This temple is about 400 years old and legend has it that, Lord Ram spends the entire day at Ayodhya, but he comes to Orchha to spend the night. After the visit to the temple, you can have good breakfast in any of the dhabas that are available. These dhabas serve you good food that too at reasonable rates.

Once done with your morning breakfast, you can first visit the Raja Mahal, built by king Madhukar Shah. Though, this palace is in ruins and facades have cracked in several places, exposing the bones and blackened innards behind the mustard walls. You can take help of the guide who can ensure that you will return safely to the entrance of the palace without getting lost among the 400 rooms and seven floors of the palace.This palace has some of the wonderful paintings, and murals that has been miraculously preserved in some of the rooms. The colors are fresh and figures has been drawn with sedulous attention to detail. On the ceilings, there were intricate patterns of birds, animals, flowers, and trees. There were wide open courtyards fringed by latticed windows and arched doorways and behind them were subtly concealed vents and passages that created a natural ventilation with a marvellous interplay of light and air.

The palace has been designed to be cool in summers and warm in winters and their architectural devices seemed to have been more effective than our current electronic gadgets. There were some large basins that were filled with water and scented flowers, so that the cool breeze could blow inside the rooms. There were niches on the walls that held small earthen lamps which would bathe the entire area in their shimmering glow.

The queens had a separate palace for herself and it was called the Rani Mahal, which was situated few metres away from Raja Mahal. This Rani Mahal is now the Ram Raja temple. Legend has it that, the queen of Madhukar Shah was a devotee of Ram. She did a long penance at Ayodhya, and finally Lord Ram appeared and he agreed to go with her to Orchha. But Lord Ram had three conditions that he wanted the queen to fulfill. They were: The queen would reach Orchha by foot, walking in moonlight, and once s=he reached there he would not move. The queen agreed to the conditions and carried the idol of Ram with her. Meanwhile in Orchha, a grand temple was being built for Lord Ram. So the queen temporally, placed the idol of Ram in her private chamber till the temple was built. The day the temple was completed, and it was time to move the idol, it would budge, so the temple stayed there from then on.

The Chaturbhuj temple, significant and dedicated to Lord Vishnu is next to Ram Rajya temple and can be viewed from king's palace. Then move along to Jahangir Mahal, built by King Bir Singh Deo in 1626 for Jahangir's visit after his coronation. This beautiful palace is modelled after a Datiya which was admired by Jahangir. The palace is a symbol of harmony between Hindus and Muslims. The palace is built in Indo Saracenic style and the color theme are blue and green. Though, most of the color has faded away, but you can still brilliant tiled flowers, and geometric shapes of a lovely aquamarine hue embedded in some walls. The room for Jehangir was the largest one with elaborately carved windows, a balcony, walls that had been embellished with gems and a magnificent painted ceiling. Jahangir stayed in that palace just for a night and after that no one lived there.

Another small palace called Rai Praveen Mahal. Rai Praveen Mahal was beautiful and accomplished courtesan whose fame reached Emperor Akbar. He summoned her to Delhi, even though Rai Praveen was besotted with Raja Indramani. On reaching Delhi, for a particular question, she compared Akbar to a crow saying that he was like a crow who lived on the leftovers. Emperor Akbar was so impressed that he sent her back with full honours to her beloved king. This palace was stands for her memory.

You can stop at cenotaphs of Bundela kins on the banks of Betwa. They are like mi nature temples with a pyramid like spears and arched doorways. Though no one hardly visit this place, but one should as it would be a tribute to the Bundela kings who created some of the beautiful jewels in a nodescript place called - Orchha.

Fact File:

• To reach Orchha, you can take a flight to Gwalior from Delhi and there you can hire a cab to cover a distance of 120 kms.
• There are many hotels in Orchha, that suit different budgets. Some of them are: Sheesh Mahal, The Betwa Retreat, Orchha Resort, Amar Mahal
• Food: There are many hotels where you can dine out, but my suggestion would be check out the dhabas, where the food offers you a great value for money and tastes great also.
• Best time to visit would be between October and March, but recommended time to travel would be late November to January.

Trip to Wargal

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.