Hyderabad to Warangal on bike

On 11^th January, 2014, at 7:15 am we started from Kondapur, Hyderabad towards Warangal. The distance is of nearly 175 km and planned to reach in three and a half hours. Two riders, one back pack and the bike started the journey. This is our first long distance journey on bike together and we are not going in group, so was little bit worried and highly excited.

We took the road suggested by Google map, from Kondapur to Uppal through city roads and then took the Hyderabad – Warangal highway. Initial few kms from Uppal are so crowded that we thought we are not in a highway and took a wrong road (and as you know, mobile GPS doesn’t work when you need it most), but latter part of the road is better and going forward it was great. A big section of the road is a tolled road (free for us though as we are on bike), and the bike reached more than 100km/hr there. Just a note to those who says Avenger becomes unstable after 100km/hr, it’s not, it’s smooth and bold as always. My wife was not encouraging this speed, but was not discouraging too. We both were helmets while riding, though they don’t really work at 100km/hr.

We took few snaps in some stops and had breakfast at one of the locality on the way. It was nearly 85 km more to reach the Warangal town after we crossed the ‘Welcome to Warangal district’ arch. This town is a union of Kazipet, Hanamkonda and Warangal towns. Our first destination was hotel Ashoka. We reached their nearly at 11:45am. It’s a nice hotel with decent reception, parking lot and a big size room. Nothing much great to mention about the hotel, and nothing as such bad too. We got fresh and took food in the hotel restaurant downstairs. Though the restaurant is little costly than look like but the food was good (actually I liked it but my wife didn’t). And now our sightseeing starts.

I generally do some homework before visiting a place, and this time was not an exception too. I had my list of places to visit ranked by the importance and vicinity. This time I send so much time in map of Warangal sightseeing that I hardly used rout finder while travelling. But you know what, Google sometime shows you roads from the backside of a building, and that what it did in case of Thousand pillar temple. We took a narrow ‘gali’ from its back side and reached the temple though its main gate was just on the main road. Though neither of us is a believer, but we like visiting temples, mostly the old once.

This temple was made during Kakatiya dynasty nearly 900yrs ago. It is a running temple and little bit crowded. A ‘kirtan’ was going on there and looked like some VIP was visiting too. 

The temple is completely made of stone. The pillars and beams are made of stones and joint by ‘T’-joints. The sculptures inside and outside the temple is great. This actually doesn’t have thousand pillars. The walls are curved like multiple pillars. The big circular pillars inside the temple are made of dark green marbles (so dark that it looks black if not in sunlight). One part of the temple was under renovation. We spend more than one hour there before we start searching for Siddeshwara Temple and Padmakshi temple.

Google map was wrong this time too, though we reached the places asking local people. Siddeshwara temple is an isolated small and newly made temple. We didn’t feel to go inside and start searching for Padmakshi temple. This one was placed on top of a hilly area. Again, this one too wasn’t much great but couldn’t resist myself from trying to climb the hilly road (may be 50m max) by my bike. We haven’t entered the temple though.

Our next destination was Warangal fort. To reach this place we had to cross complete Warangal town and lost the road one more times by Google. I should really say, Google map is never this much bad, but either due to the slow network or the improper GPS, in this tour it was really misleading us multiple times. 

Anyways, coming back to the fort topic, it is not really a fort. Though it has a high fort boundary for that area, but most inside area is residential. There are two main locations to see in this fort area. 

One was a garden with scattered leftovers of fort from that time and most importantly, four entry gates. Though it might not be a fort but the sculptures on the left over was real good. The entry gates are the most important monuments of this place and you can see same looking gates in any important building in Warangal. The other was a big hall room called some mahal, really nothing to see though.

Our next destination was Kakatiya Musical Garden Kakatiya Rock Garden. We were not able to find the Rock garden but found the musical one. Why musical? Because it has a musical fountain. Other than that, there was nothing much musical and I was real disappointed because of the expectation I had by the ‘musical’ word.

The day ends with 200+ km bike ride in a day and a great dinner with kebabs from a roadside shop. This was our highest ride in a day up to that point and no doubt it was tiring but (in a strange way) with no back pain which I was kind of expecting as most part of the day we were on bike.

Next day started with a fresh morning but with a failed sunrise seeing try. I generally try to find a sunrise point in every place I travel, but here was none (as far I got). After getting ready and taking a road side breakfast we started for our last destination, Bhadrakali temple. This one too is a running temple and moderately crowded. It hardly had any historical significance but was a nice place (mostly the lake side part) to spend some time.

At nearly 10:30am we started back towards Hyderabad. Took hardly one or two breaks and reached nearly by 1:30pm. It was 377kms in two day for us. We were tired, but more than that was excited to search for new place to go by bike.