December 30th, 2016, Friday it was.! When the whole world was still struggling what to plan on new year night which came on a weekend, I went to sleep with excitement thinking about the ride I am going to do next morning.
2:50 AM, that’s when I woke up and waiting for the alarm to ring by 3:00 AM. Of course, excitement will not let you sleep. By 3:15, I am out of the house. Gloves in, sweater on and the destination was Ahobilam. Longest possible route in the freezing cold at 12 degrees temperature. By the time it was Anantapur town, the light started to come joining me for the remaining journey through the windmills and empty roads. After spending time with Bengaluru traffic this was the beauty. All the roads are mine… the limitations, the signals, the traffic, the pollution… no scope for all these.. just the scenic beauty.
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Riding along the fields, I was wondering how beautiful these human-made beauties are, Jowar fields, they are the golden pearls blushing on the top of those greens. Tobacco leaves, irrespective of how they harm the way they are dried! I just fell in love with the design. The cotton crop which looked like small clouds in the size of droplets of water which brings a smile on anyone’s face. Maize, it’s just hiding the golden yellow smile wrapping around the light green leaves. Sheep, going along the road, that brown one’s with white patches looked like the mud water stream flowing down the hill during rains. Earth was so impressive that we get lost in it sometimes.
Finally, after a really long beautiful ride which was almost 380km, I reached Allagadda. Ahobilam is located in Allagadda mandal of Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh. Now it’s time to wait for the brothers coming from Hyderabad. Yes, it’s not just me but my brothers were also there. Within half an hour they reached. Riding for another 30km we reached upper ahobilam by 12:30PM.
Ahobilam is filled with ten temples which are located in upper ahobilam (eguva ahobilam) and lower ahobilam(diguva ahobilam). Lower ahobilam have one shrine where as upper ahobilam have nine shrines spread around 5km radius. In order to see all the shrines nohing to do but to walk along the mountains watching the greens with small wooden bridges coming up on the way.
But the real challenge there was to visit Ugra sthambam . At a distance of eight kilometres from the Upper Ahobilam temple, we can see a cleft of the mountain dividing it into two visible parts. It is a long-held view that from the cleft, the Lord appeared in the form of Narasimha and this cleft is known as ‘Ugra Sthambham’.
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With all excitement, when we started up to the top, here comes the people returning back telling us. Hey guys, it’s already late. Better don’t go. We looked at the time 4:20PM. Glancing at each other three of us smiled. Because we decided what to do. Carrying one bag in each one’s hand which are filled with fruits and maggie packets and tent in one of our hands. We wanted to put our tent up there and spend the night. ;) The stones rolling down are teaching us about the importance of gravity that moment. One wrong step can give a practical experience as well. Such was the way the path’s condition.
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Finally after reaching the top of Ugra sthambam comes the surprise. We had to go down a little ahead to reach the destination. We thought it’s not easy with bags. So keeping the bags near one of the stones covering it up with our jackets we went down ahead to reach the divine tranquility.
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After a little brain storming on how to reach the divine spot we started to walk slowly. It’s better to say crawl rather than walking. With lot of people using the same path rocks became smooth making it difficult to walk and easy to slide. :P Finally, we did it the same day. Riding for more than 350km and trekking 8km immediately is an achievement for me.
Interestingly, humans think about god only when they find difficulties. If we go there everyone would pray because any thing wrong would send them down like 3km from there directly. There is a small oil lamp inside a enclosure around the pillar which is withstanding the wind over at that altitude
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When we are in a divine mood enjoying the nature, shouts some random people from far. Bro, your bags.. monkeys.. Now it’s time for us to rush back in slow motion. ;) By the time we reached to get rid of the monkeys from our bags, they intelligently took the zip open and are having feast leaving few oranges for us. Even the Maggie packets are gone.
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We are happy that at-least they helped us get rid of the load we got to carry. As we have no place to put up the tent we decided to go down till Jwala Narasimha swamy temple and stay over night there. So we quickly got down with the left over food and bags before it got dark.
Now at Jwala Narasimha Swamy Temple premises. The temple of Jwala Nrisimha Swamy, lies higher up the above temple, on a hill called, ‘Achalachaya Meru’. This is about four kilometres from the Upper Ahobilam temple. This place is said to be the actual spot, where the fierce anger of the Lord reached its culmination when he tore Hiranyakasipa.
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We went straight to the person who’s guarding the place. All the nine temples are guarded by the people who live in those “Nallamalla” forest called “Chenchelu”. He welcomed us to stay there. Even though his son in law and daughter are leaving down the hill they instructed him to offer us the food for the night. That’s an interesting incident. Getting tasty food after loosing what we have , that too in no time. After having a long discussion with that man on Dec 31st 2016 night, we started watching the stars. Mesmerizing beauty it is. Night watch is just amazing. After a long silent time we moved to sleep inside temple. Tent lies unopened as we are warned that stones may be falling down sometimes.
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After a very silent ending for 2016, we woke up with a fresh smile on the New year. After spending some more time there having a hot coffee in that cold climate we started back Watching the sun rise above the hill we started walking down the hill.
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Down the hill, along the rocks, crossing the streams with a deep satisfaction in heart and lot of hunger in stomach we reached down the hill offering our sticks to the devotees who started to climb up.
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Now it’s time to start back. With a fun filled new year morning we rode to the river which we saw on the way.
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After having lunch from Jammalamadugu now it’s time for us to part our ways. I am now off to Bengaluru and my brothers to Gandikota. As I am running out of time and winter is scaring on the way I left without going to gandikota.
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Time to ride back home in a different route. 4:30pm it was. Jammalamadugu to Bengaluru 270km. Solo ride back again. After 5km comes the real fun. Road with pebbles, starting on the right bike goes to the left end. After struggling for 20km finally comes the long road between the mountains. Reminds of the Manjhi man.
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Finally after a long ride in the bitter cold along the forest road for almost 150km here comes the Asian Highway to Bengaluru.At 10:45PM , Jan 1st 2017 I applied the breaks at my residence to rest for starting the new year for good deeds from next day.Back to demonetization effect. ;)
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With new dreams and more fun to go with.. I wish you all a very Happy New Year..