Srisailem is a small village situated in India’s largest tiger reserve near the banks of River Krishna.
We hired an AC Qualis and started from Hyderabad on Saturday morning along with some friends. We went to see Nagarjuna Sagar Dam first as it lies on the way to Srisailem. The dam is really huge and the river is very wide and clean. From there we took a boat to Nagarjunakonda, which is a museum situated on an island in the river. Though it was hot and sunny in the beginning, the weather soon became better and cloudy. The museum has all the buddhist remains found in the river during the construction of the dam.
From there we came back and started out for Srisailem. The route was enchanting. It was an uphill drive. It felt like we were going to some hill station. It rained slightly on the way too. We reached Srisailem in the evening and checked into our hotel rooms. We had booked APTDC hotel with AC rooms – good budget hotel; you don’t have any other choice. After some rest, we walked out for some sightseeing. We went to see one big famous temple there, but didn’t go inside because of the long queue there. After that, we came back to the hotel and had dinner in the local canteen. All we could get was dosa and regular thali. No other type of food was available for kilometers.
Next morning we woke up early at 6:30 am and went to the banks of River Krishna. We took the ropeway downhill and boarded a motorboat to reach Akkamahadevi caves, which was an hour’s ride. With green mountains on both sides and river in the middle, it was a view to remember forever. Though the sun was high; the cool breeze compensated for it. After an hour we reached the caves, but because of the lowered water level, we had to do some good amount of trekking on a small mud path to reach the caves. By the time we reached the caves, all of us were hungry and thirsty. Thanks to a small stall run by a sadhu at the top of the mountain; selling cold drinks and some biscuits; we regained our energy. The scene was beautiful. These were natural caves formed by the flowing river water. All the layers of the giant stones were visible. The insides of the cave were very dark with bats making noises and only one person at a time could go inside using a torch because of the small width of the caves.
After spending some time at the caves we came back and reached our hotel in the afternoon - famished! We ate the same food we had for dinner last night and started the tour back. We had planned to visit Ethipothala waterfalls on our way back, but the driver lost his way and we missed the turn, so we came back to Hyderabad.