Mantralaya - online travel planning, bungling and managing
Decided to travel to Mantralaya in the recent long weekend, at a very short notice. Ended up doing all planning online with "no" real inputs, the trip was great, but for a few surprises.
First step was to book a hotel room at Mantralaya, there were none available. Trip Advisor, helpfully showed some hotels in Kurnool as alternative, seemed a bit far.
Google maps showed an optional route to Mantralaya through Kurnool, so thought it should be OK. Trip Advisor also showed few interesting tourist spots at Kurnool, the first on the list was the Belum caves, looked interesting so booked.
We started at about 9 am on 2nd October and reached Kurnool at about 1:30 pm, on enquiring about the caves we figured that it is about 180 kms away! This attraction being listed at the top on the website gave the impression that it was close to the city, my mistake on not checking the distance (or asking friends).
But we visited the Jogulamba temple about 30 kms away on the banks of Tungabhadra. The route was totally deserted, but for our vehicle on the road. There was a cluster of factories on the way, with lot of trucks, the road was not that great, but the temple was good. See a video of the temple and river:
Next surprise was the route to Mantralaya, we did ask about the time to travel, we heard that it is two and half hours as it is 100 kms, but google maps showed 72.5 km only. We started at about 9:30 am on Saturday morning, we followed google maps, then we figured the difference. The route we took had few stretches of a few kms of dirt track, very difficult to drive, but we made it. Had noticed at least three cars on the highway to Kurnool with flat tyres, that was a worry, as the spare tyre is with a side wall puncture fixed. Fortunately, we did not have any flat tyre in our journey.
Mantralaya was good, see the pictures by clicking on the photo to the right.
Visited the Panchamukhi temple near by, smarter by now we used common sense and took the better looking road over what google maps recommended.
We exercised the same caution on way back to Bangalore, that is still we hit the highway. We saw lot of greenery on the road, lots of cattles too. One amazing site was hundreds of goats in a single flock, see video of the flock here:
The trip was very relaxing, in spite of a lot of driving. Next trip will use google maps in conjunction with inputs from friends and will cross check too.
First step was to book a hotel room at Mantralaya, there were none available. Trip Advisor, helpfully showed some hotels in Kurnool as alternative, seemed a bit far.
Google maps showed an optional route to Mantralaya through Kurnool, so thought it should be OK. Trip Advisor also showed few interesting tourist spots at Kurnool, the first on the list was the Belum caves, looked interesting so booked.We started at about 9 am on 2nd October and reached Kurnool at about 1:30 pm, on enquiring about the caves we figured that it is about 180 kms away! This attraction being listed at the top on the website gave the impression that it was close to the city, my mistake on not checking the distance (or asking friends).
But we visited the Jogulamba temple about 30 kms away on the banks of Tungabhadra. The route was totally deserted, but for our vehicle on the road. There was a cluster of factories on the way, with lot of trucks, the road was not that great, but the temple was good. See a video of the temple and river:
Next surprise was the route to Mantralaya, we did ask about the time to travel, we heard that it is two and half hours as it is 100 kms, but google maps showed 72.5 km only. We started at about 9:30 am on Saturday morning, we followed google maps, then we figured the difference. The route we took had few stretches of a few kms of dirt track, very difficult to drive, but we made it. Had noticed at least three cars on the highway to Kurnool with flat tyres, that was a worry, as the spare tyre is with a side wall puncture fixed. Fortunately, we did not have any flat tyre in our journey.
Mantralaya was good, see the pictures by clicking on the photo to the right.
Visited the Panchamukhi temple near by, smarter by now we used common sense and took the better looking road over what google maps recommended.We exercised the same caution on way back to Bangalore, that is still we hit the highway. We saw lot of greenery on the road, lots of cattles too. One amazing site was hundreds of goats in a single flock, see video of the flock here:
The trip was very relaxing, in spite of a lot of driving. Next trip will use google maps in conjunction with inputs from friends and will cross check too.
posted by vasu @ 9:55 AM
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