Trip to Nagarjuna Sagar

After many months of planning, finally it was decided among my friends that we will visit Nagarjuna Sagar in Telengana by Bikes, two bikes to be specific.

From Hitech in Hyderabad, it is a 3 hours journey if you do not stop anywhere and a total of 182 kms. We set out at 4 am in the morning, since we believed that it might take 4-5 hours on bike. After all it is no fun in the journey if you do not stop rest in between and do so some sightseeing.

The two bikes chosen were Yamaha FZ and Bajaj Pulsar ( the most reliable bikes in that segment, good for rough terrains.)  We took state highway 19 from outer ring road (also called Nehru Ring road) from Bongulur SEZ area near Hyderabad International airport.

We crossed Ibrahimpatnam at around 5:30 am, it took us 1 hour to get out from Hyderabad.

Both the bikes just kept zooming past cities and around 8 am , we were 30 kms away from our destination, considering the speed with which we were driving, it was 15-20 min away. We sat down around the road on couple of places to stretch the legs, sitting on the bike for more than 2 hour can be quite painful for butts.

The hotel that we found at the Nagarjuna sagar was a budget hotel with very basic facilities, Military style rooms. It was a government hotel opposite the Lake. The region has a sizable population with many housing societies and schools around. The food was manageable , certainly not great one. It was a 1 day trip so we took it in our stride.

There is another eating place which comes before you arrive at the Nagarjuna Sagar, which is also Andhra Pradesh (AP) tourism department run . It is far better in condition, may be next time if we go to Nagarjuna Sagar then we will use those facilities.

The view from the hotel we stayed was nice. Later we went out for a boat ride, to the center of the lake where a museum is made by the AP government (just a walk in the park , if I may say).

We had to wait 1 hour in the ticket counter for it to start (so not so great customer service), after reaching the small island via the boat, we had the usual Dosa (a south Indian Dish) at the canteen there (again not great food quality, . We ate it since we were hungry ) .

At the hotel, there were many pictures of the National leaders who were there to over see the development of the Nagarjuna Sagar dam, the pictures also showed various stages of development of the Dam. This Dam plays a major role for water and electricity supply for two states of India, Telengana and Andhra Pradesh .

This Dam was built in 1950s and finished work in 1970s. It was nice to see the pictures and revisit the history. The Leaders which I was able to identify were Indian Prime Ministers JL Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi.

Once we were done seeing the lake, we headed for Ethipothala Falls. It is 30 min drive from Nagarjuna sagar. The river Krishna’s tributary flows under the land for a while before re-emerging and then falling from the cliffs.

There were alligators there , hence none of the tourists were allowed to go near the falls. Honesty it was a 25 mins watch, not a great attraction as we had thought earlier.

Then there was “Monkey menace” which we all recall vividly, who were a terror there for children and womenfolk. We had lunch there offered by the Andhra Pradesh tourism (again not great food) before setting out to our journey back to Hyderabad.