Drive from Hyderabad to Srisailam

3rd Trip to Srisailam (10-Feb-2018)

Large Grey Babbler

Large Grey Babbler

2nd trip to Srisailam - Uma Maheshwari Temple(20-June-2015)
One way distance: 165 km 

A wonderful spot, sometimes also known as the poor man's Ooty. Great for birding but only if you are able to reach by morning hours. It takes 3 hours to reach from Hyderabad and presently the road condition is horrible - considering the road widening process going on from Hyderabad to Srisailam.  A trip for birding will be extremely strenuous. This time i only wanted to check the spot for future birding opportunities and my visit was around 1 PM. Here are the pics below. 

Hyderabad to Srisailam and back in one day trip 
Total: 520 KM

This was all of a sudden. Dad came to Hyderabad to support us in finding a baby sitter for Eins and all of a sudden we got an idea that we can drive to some location for a day trip. It could be either the kuntalawaterfalls, nagarjuna sagar or srisailam. After doing a bit of research we finally decided with srisailam. Since eins was still very young  and I could still pick him up and carry him, so we thought this is an ideal time when this trip can be made. Moreover, since dad was with us so we had 2 drivers on the trip, another reason for a long drive. Took a leave from my office for Saturday and started on this day trip.

There is only one route for srisailam, which is pretty decent in itself. It is not 4 lane but the road condition is just awesome  and a pleasure to drive all through. I had no tiredness whatsoever when I returned back. Obviously I did my best to come back within daylight but by the time we started our return journey it was already dark. The onward journey was super smooth, we planned our safari first at farhabad view point, incidentally that didn't happen since the forest officials / guides / drivers weren't available even till 10 AM, although the official time to start the safari was 9 AM. We couldn't wait any longer and decided to move ahead and kept the safari for our return journey.

Headed straight to mallela tirtham waterfalls. From the min road you have to take a left which is very easy to miss. Google maps helped a lot and we managed to take the correct turn after confirming from locals. There's a village road (kuccha road with no bitumen coating) for about 10-12 KM and then you reach the waterfalls. The waterfall was good, 320 steps of stairs had to be traversed down and then back up which was a bit tiring for all of us except Eins. It was a hot day and since monsoon yet to start so very less water in the waterfalls. Still we loved the serene spot, with very few tourists.

Finally moved on to srisailam, a beautiful big dam was awaiting us after some ghat sections. Went inside the city of srisailam, took the rope-way, I was surprised to see they allowed Eins on the ropeway without any trouble, even without tickets. The officials and people in-charge even clicked some pics of Eins in their mobiles, I was surprised and happy that he got a chance to go into the ropeway, probably he is still a puppy. Finally came the boat ride and again the surprise element was there. Again people allowed Eins to go into the boat ride without any fuss, without any ticket. Well that’s the fun of having a cute boxer, however I am not sure if they will allow him once he is full grown.

Wanted to go to shikharam which is the highest peak of srisailam, but couldn't go there as we had to visit the farhabad view point safari, the last one starts at 3-30 PM. So finally we managed to reach farhabad point just in time and started on the safari in the official jeep.

Safari was okay, nothing great, came to know that farhabad view point is actually a place inside the srisailam tiger reserve where they had a rest house some time back and was burned down by Maoists. So that has become a landmark and a viewpoint now. Enroute to that viewpoint which takes around 30 minutes to reach from main gate, you will find a lot of spotted deer.  But that’s all, nothing else other than spotted deer and peacock. No other animal will you be finding there. They don’t take you to the core area of the forest which is in a valley visible below the view point. Nice view point but it would have been good if they took you inside the core jungle area. Still you would love spotting the deer enroute and will surely give a lot of enjoyment to the kids. Surprisingly, they even allowed Eins to travel in that jeep for the safari, and he was a good boy all through, didn't bark at all and just kept on watching the deer peacefully. 

So that was it, we started back around 5 PM and reached Hyderabad around 9 PM. A nice day trip , a little hectic but as usual a fun to drive.