My Araku-Chhattisgarh-Vizag expedition!

Prelude

Am usually lost in my own world until I get involved into the situation fully. This is precisely what happened in the trip to Araku. I was going for a Trip to Araku was all I knew, and the rest of the plan that was being circulated by email was all but a passing one which I really did not read in detail as it mentioned places which I had not heard about and had no time to look up either. I was just looking forward to having a good trip and a good vacation and I had always wanted to visit Araku sometime.

The Journey

It started with us taking a bus to Vizag. Once we got there we had our car/wagon receive us and take us to the Green Park hotel for getting fresh and breakfast. Breakfast was awesome… I indulged a lot beyond what is usually expected of me owing to my stature! Soon after breakfast we set off on the drive, to what I came to know now, to a place called Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh, which was around 280 kms from Vizag! A long drive that would be in our Indian conditions… We had to exit Andhra Pradesh and drive through Orissa to get there. We started off on the journey and I was longing to get out of the humid weather of Vizag ASAP.

But it wasn’t long before I began to realize that this was the most beautiful journey I had by road so far. Orissa with it’s a lush green cover and the Eastern Ghats running along the route we took were the first things that had us in awe and amazement giving a treat to our eyes wherever we looked. I noticed that the Eastern Ghats were distinctly different from Western Ghats, and are much more undeveloped and unexplored! This feeling of the getting to see the unknown, and not to forget mentioning with some amazingly good music (from the collection of our key organizer), created the mood for a wonderful trip and seemed to propagate a feeling of getting a brief stint with adventure...

Paparazzi in action!

The weather and surrounding landscape were both exceptionally stunning and convinced me that there is probably some hope left in our ‘globally warmed’ planet. I was extremely gratified to be on this trip. The ghat roads, the cloudy weather with low cumulonimbus, the sudden spells of heavy rain, and the wet highway roads just after the rain, created the perfect concoction for a trip like this. All through the drive we stopped innumerable times to capture the magnificence of nature that our eyes could see, to our amateur cameras to look in awe and enjoy these moments in future. Each of us made the best effort to put our photography skills to the test and capture some of the best shots of nature; from the lush green cover to the hills and the plains, to wet roads, passing clouds, rain and thunder clouds, to lakes and lone boats, fishermen, villagers, tribal people, you name it and we captured those moments to a still! This was incredibly a satisfying experience…What we experienced was nature at its very best!

@ Jagdalpur

We reached Jagdalpur late in the evening and put up at the tourism bungalow, which was very attractively done up from the outside. Our rooms were nice and had all the necessary amenities, and expect for a few misadventures with a leaking air-conditioner we had a good time that evening, and went off to bed with anticipation of the next day when we would be able to see the waterfalls that we had come all the way to see.

The next morning we checked out of the bungalow after taking enough pictures of the place, and set off to Chitrakoot, 37 kms from Jagdalpur, after a most sumptuous brunch at a Rajasthani mess. During the short drive we were not very expectant of seeing something really fabulous except for what we had heard about this place. They said that one could sometimes see a rainbow on the falls! We crossed a bridge over the Indravati River, which looked pretty narrow and calm. We reached in about 30 minutes and as we got out of our car, we could hear this very loud but comforting sound of water falling. We were pretty surprised that we didn’t even need tickets to get to the waterfalls, on the other hand we saw the place being guarded by plain clothes security guards with AK-47 rifles!! This was scary, as for a moment I thought these guys were the naxals themselves!! The state of Chhattisgarh is one of the most naxal-affected states in our country and from what I heard later, even locals have not dared to come and see these falls due to the naxals. This also explained why there was no entry ticket or publicity by tourism.

The sight, sound, and force of the waterfalls was breathtaking! That puny little river grew so huge before it fell into the gorge and created one of the most spectacular waterfalls I had seen in this part of the country! The falls did resemble the Niagara owing to its shape, except that the water was muddy due to the rainy season. We allowed our eyes to gaze at this fantastic sight for as long as we could, not to forget taking enough pictures and videos, to remind us of the feel the waterfalls gave us, for future viewing.

Journey to Araku

The next part of the journey to our main destination, the Araku valley, was shorter owing to the fact that there was another route from Chhattisgarh to Araku that was only 150 kms. We would be at Araku pretty soon is what we assumed, but nature was a major distraction once again, and succeeded in leading us off the time schedule. All through the driver we stopped, exclaimed, wondered in awe, refreshed our lungs and minds, and replenished our energies… When we were just 15 mins away from reaching Araku one of our companions suddenly identified this absolutely serene and most impeccable spot, which had green grass, hills, a river and boats. This stopover had us raving about how untouched and non-commercial a lot of the places we drove through were. Another collection of irreplaceable shots made their way to our memories as well as memory cards!!

Araku the Destination

By now we were infamous for being delayed in our schedules; so we reached our hotel at Araku booked at the AP Tourism, Hotel Harita, much after dark. We checked into our rooms, ordered dinner combined with a short get together, over some good music and had a good rest off the evening before taking off bed pretty late that night. The next day was the bigger plan of going out to see the beautiful valley! But alas, the next morning we were late to wake up, owing to exhaustion from travel and a late night, and were quite late to start. This made is realize that we would have to compromise a few of the plans like going to the Borra caves, maybe we could just make it to the beach at Vizag before taking our bus back home. But we started off soon enough and had a lot more splendid encounters with nature in the form of Araku valley. All through the drive we looked around our surrounding of the Araku valley with awe-inspiring amazement. Our stop at some of the viewpoints were fruitful in giving us some amazing views of the entire valley and its terrain. We didn’t get an opportunity to socialize with the tribals of this valley and watch them dance for us, but the drive up the hill was stupefying! The highest point is around 3800 ft and we saw clouds on the tops of the hills!! The most marvelous scenery I must say… After this we managed to visit the water reservoir in the valley, which they seemed to have dammed up on one side of the valley to create a reservoir; an interesting concept that gave us another wonderful sight to gape at!!

Back to Vizag

This was again just another 150 kms and we got back in time to have a good, though late lunch at Hotel Greenpark again. Thankfully since it was a Sunday there were enough customers and they were still serving lunch after 3 in the afternoon. I had the most amazing pasta here, and every time I went back for another helping it would be over! Soon after lunch, we started off for the beach, though one of our companions had to leave owing to his flight time and some personal meetings. Given the limited time we headed straight to the Rishikonda beach, which has the most fantastic, blue and clear water, which you will see in few beaches in India. One thing quite unlike other beaches is that the salt content in the water is pretty high and a single dip can make you feel like you’re in a pretty sticky beach/situation J It was a short but as I would put it, a time well-spent at the Rishikonda beach; imagine taking a wooden boat into the sea! It was a fun ride with the waves nearly toppling the boat over owing to the tide being quite high on this day. We played in the water and got ourselves soaked wet and had to book another place to change in time before we could catch our bus back. The hotel right next to the beach was the Harita, by AP tourism again and the building’s design was interesting with its beach-facing cottage-looking rooms with a nice beach-facing balcony. We got some amazing shots of the beach from the exterior of this hotel and surprisingly even spotted a rainbow that might have formed due to the drizzle that was on.

Epilogue

We finally got on our bus back to Hyderabad, though tired but completely rejuvenated by the trip. But another eventuality that fogged me a while after this trip, was that I was completely in love with this city, Vizag… so calm and peaceful, with a beautiful green cover, broad roads in a great condition and such less traffic and population! Seemed like the perfect city to be in. Some bungalows we saw along the beach got me tempted to buy property here. This place seemed to have a lot of potential after Hyderabad, as I see Hyderabad reaching a saturation point and the infrastructure not to cope with the dramatic metamorphosis and development that is taking place. Satyam and Infy had setup huge offices at Vizag owing to the cheaper cost and the availability of land. Now let’s save this discussion for another blogpost!

Traffikkiiiiiiiiii

TrrafficKKKKK... do I need to say more... I know you would say... now don't get started. I understand why one would say this; it is a never-ending discussion! Does anything ever change the situation, no matter how many times you crib in a day, regardless of how often your car is kissed by another 'body of mass' constituting traffic! Uhhh...how ridiculous!

For someone like me who loves to drive, the 'traffic' just takes away the fun of it. In some unobtrusive moments I mull over the ordeal, and try to add a punch of humor to the whole situation.

One perspective is to look at the road as a F1 racetrack and with the attitude; I get there no matter what comes dude! Watch out fellas, am coming! Start from home in full vigor, ready to take over the world, turn on your music real loud, turn on the air-conditioner and get ready to hit the road. The first encounter on the way, the 'infamous' auto-rickshaw (aahhh my fav topic in trafficK) The bloke thinks he rules the road himself as he just has a 3-wheeler and can get through the narrowest lacuna you create. Now your objective is to avoid any such eventuality and make ‘your’ way first. You start the despicable honking, yeah man, behold, my horn is louder than yours and am gonna blow your ears offff!!! honk honk... honk honk... annnnnnnnnnnddd wheeee he's forced to move left now you zip around him from the right-side and yippppeeeee... I made it!

Now am on the main road, and driving amongst other 4-wheelers, all very solemn and sedate; wondering where they would be able to make it on time for that 10 AM meeting, or have to show a sorry face. We drive on much slower now, the number of cars only increase until we come to that ill-fated halt! Now I have a ton of cars in front of me, to the left and the right; even behind... could one get into a stickier situation than this??? This really kills the morning spirit... does it... duh???? What next? The best thing to do in a situation like this is to find comfort in another’s travails. Its really simple actually, just look around at the drivers of the other 4-wheeled masses around you; some totally placid, other lackadaisical, and interestingly some on the qui vive, waiting to take off at that slightest stir.

But we’re not done until we add the icing to this wonnnderful chocolate cake we’re in the process of making. Us on the 4-wheeled masses often tend to go amiss, as we tend to ignore the trivia—introducing the 2-wheeled roadies! These dudes have just always excelled in the art of ‘making their way’ through the smallest fissures you despairingly leave for want of a little space or just from getting your ‘manually’ controlled side view mirror from closing like an automatic one! Oh how could we have missed them??? Amidst the intergalactic masses, neatly parked; after having put a lot of effort into ‘not’ leaving that last inch, you per chance hear that little zoom n zippin sound, and alas he is here, parked right in front on you and that too at an angle, so he can ‘fit’ the gap!!! After all that effort, he still makes it!!! They’re all aliens…Uhh God! life is unfair… And that’s not the end there again; everyone behind is now following the leader, and before you know it, you find yourself surrounded by a swaarm of bees!!! Zip zip zip, one behind the other they all wrench their way through!! But everyone’s not perfect there now, so there’s needs to be that little causality, oh stop stop, there goes my side view mirror, turned a 180 degrees in the opposite direction!!! The blighter just looks back at you with this half unapologetic look and pushes off!!! What a bummer!!! It transcends my imagination how 'closely' we miss each other, when we do of course; just by inches and centimeters! We spoke about killing the spirit earlier, and I will have to reiterate that… this kills the spirit dude! What’s next now?

We finally break off from that intergalactic mass and move on, the jam is tardily freeing, but we’re still inching, with foot on the clutch, pulling up the remnant enthuse, we move on, with the 2-wheeled body guards escorting us omni-directionally!

Suddenly, what’s that noise? Ambulance? Police? Oh no, I know that sound, it’s the VIPs. Of course, it had to be them, office time is the time they choose to make it to the venue of their mass gatherings, addressing the common man before the election time. No wonder we were parked like the army waiting for the king to make his way first… and then the commons!

Finally, when one does get to work, one is nothing short of some delectable tangdi kabab or over cooked barbeque chicken or??? At this point of time, the thought of the journey back home is just another incomprehensible one....

And thus one makes the relentless effort each day through this mad mad congestion, and still survives it… aah life is a miracle, we survive most of the things no matter how frustrating!! You look on and so do the incapacitated traffic police. Now lets not start that discussion ... :)