August 1st 2010

Hi All,

This is Raj (Narendar) from the gang of intellectuals you are about to know by reading further. This blog is about our trip to Ananthagiri Forest near Vikarabad.

I was the man who initiated the trip and had to get all possible details and possibilities to reach and have fun at our destination i.e. Ananthagiri forest.

I completed getting the info and then gathered the gang to describe the plan, but .... the gang was busy developing the companies they were employed in they hung in offices even after 10pm at night, so I had to discuss this on phone and get this flattened out.

Finally six of us got ready for the trip...and here is the plan we initially decided to follow
* Get up at 2am on sunday,
* Cook food for lunch
* Start at 3:30 am
* Reach destination at 5:00 am

But as usual, by the time the gang gathered it was 4am and we started at 4:30am.




Six boyz and three bikes.
Me...
Sai Kishore...























Kamal Kiran...
Kiran...Rahmat....
Praveen...









(No Camera)...

The ride was beautiful and green.....








We reached vikarabad, driving in the open plains, getting up early in the morning made us double hungry, so we had to take the breakfast. we got into one of the tiffin centres and asked for the menu.....

We almost ordered every item in the menu twice and our tummy's calmed down...we then decided to continue our journey.

The forest is another 5 kilometers from here. we reached there in just 10 mins, it was a lovely Ghat road and the sun wasn't out yet.


We reached the destination, we decided to visit the temple first, I forgot to say, Ananthagiri is firstly famous for the temple of Anantha Padmanabha Swamy its a real ancient temple and its really peaceful.








There weren't much people as we were too early and the temple priests were just cleaning the temple so we were the first persons to get the darshan of the lord that day.



We then visited the Holy pond (Gundam), we saw some ancient trees there.




We came back to the road after spending one hour. We started our bikes and went into the forest area, settled down at a beautiful spot (top of the mountain) for a light snack with some cool drinks, we could see many villages from there and on top of all, the climate was superb.



We sat there for about 2 hours talking and listening to the sound of the wind and the birds,













we decided to climb down the hill. Getting down was not that hard, the recent rains made paths on the mountain and we followed them. we climbed the other mountain in front of us, we saw some peacocks and other rare birds. This was the place we deeply regretted for missing a camera with us.



We came back to our spot, totally exhausted, all the faces covered with sweats in that cold climate...but was refreshing.

At around 12:30pm we started to Kotepally Check-Dam. That was a disaster, we thought nobody would be there and we could enjoy, have a bath, play in water etc etc.... but to our utmost surprise there were lots of people from nearby villages, as it was a sunday and Friendship day. Phew....we had to come back to Ananthagiri hills again.

This time we setteled down on the other side of the hill.. we had our lunch accompanied by drizzle from the sky.

Everybody's faces started looking weared out...so we decided to leave back home..

We started our bikes to Hyderabad at around 5:30pm. The ride was really tiresome on the way back and the truck & car dirvers coming from the opposite directions were absurd..with their High beams ON, we could'nt see anything ahead...we reached city limits by 8pm. we all stopped at praveen's bachelor flat. Exchanged bye's and good night messages and departed.

Overall...the trip was above what we expected....the only thing u need is company of a nice group of friends.