Tuesday, June 08, 2021

A Hidden treasure in Andhra: Araku

  Amidst all this halla-gulla of telangana, when we decided to go to Andhra, the reaction of parents and well wishers was, "what? Why? You are getting too adventures" and blah blah. But we knew that "Dikhao pe mat jao, apni akal lagao" As we have booked tickets for Hyderabad in advance, we started our journey from Delhi as per plan. The destination was Vishakhapatnam via Hyderabad.


Vishakhapatnam, Gem of Andhra Pradesh as they call it, is a small business city located at coast side of Bay of Bengal. Its famous for its Harbor and vizag steel plant. Our destination, Araku hills were around 130 Km from her. We reached on 25th dec morning with two of other friends. To describe the city, its called a Big Village. Its developed with time but still people has this village kind of gesture and mentality. So You see high risers, wide roads, big malls but no road sense, very middle class dressing. The coast line is huge, in fact whole city is on coast side. Red sand, dangerous waters. A lot can be done around beaches. Municipal corporation needs to put some lightings, chairs shops etc on famous beaches like RK Beach and Rushi konda. But the other side of story is that the beaches are very clean and natural courtsey lack of commercailization.
There are few spots worth watching in Vizag aka Vishakhapatnam. Two beches I mentioned, Rama Krishna beach(There is a Rama Krishna Mission temple there), and other famous beach is Rushi Konda Beach. The Rushi Konda beach is said to be more violent but we saw more people bathing on Rushikonda than RK.
Also Rushikonda beach has some boats whoch can ferry you in sea but the condition of those boats and life jackets was too horrible. So just had some water-play and photo shoots and came back.

The next place we reached was Kailasagiri. Its a high point of vizag from where you see whole Vizag. Its good to plan to reach there by Sun set. There is a rope way to the top of hill. Cars can also reach there. There are few eating joints on top and a small toy train. You just sit there and watch sun seeting and whole vizag city.
I liked this spot very much and spent around 2-3 hours there. Specially aftre sunset you see whole city lights and huge coast line of Vizag.This was the last place we watched on our first day in Vizag.
Next day we started for the main destination, Araku. Its a Hill area located in Estern Costs. There is a East coast railway line going to this place with just one Toy train running on it. We couldnt get the tickets to this train as it was Chisrtmas weekend. But this train ride is very picture