If you're wondering if this place really exists in India, you'd be as surprised as me when I first heard about it. It baffled me even more once I heard that not many people are aware of it! I looked through the first set of pictures of the landscape and fell in love. I knew I had to visit this place and witness this beauty through my own eyes. We started off from Bangalore at around 5.40am, hoping to reach there just before noon. Once you step into Andhra Pradesh, the entire landscape changes drastically! Hills formed with rock boulders and dry land with a dozen windmills in the distance, everything picture perfect! The road was pretty great all together, apart from one stretch of land in the end which leads you to the APTDC hotel. Now let me tell you, there was only one hotel that you could stay at if you're planning to do a weekend trip, and this hotel needed to be booked 3 months prior as it's availability is quite in demand (and considering there is no other hotel around this place unless you want to Camp).
After lunch and rest we headed out, and the first destination- the Gandikota Fort was very close to the APTDC hotel. Pretty intricate details all around while passing through the passage way, which leads you closer to the Canyon. Heading further inside you'd find a temple (Ragunatha Temple) and a mosque (Jama Masjid) adjacent to each other. If you try capturing them from a bit further, you could get them in the same frame. Met the nicest bunch of locals here who were here to shoot a wedding video. The girls even offered me food and asked me to take a few pictures. Finally, at the peak of sunset, we reached the Canyon. If you ask me if it's actually worth the drive and wait, I'd say yes a million times! Not sure how great it would look in the scorching sun during the afternoon but I could take an easy guess that it would look as breathtaking as it did in the evening as it would look during sunrise. This place didnt have a boundary limit which makes me wonder about the safety issues as people could climb literally anywhere around these huge rocks. And not to ignore the fact that it was a scary fall all the way down. This place had a different level of calm and peace. I guess I was lucky as there weren't many tourists at that place during that time, so it felt even more zen. The rocks literally change color with time as the sunlight starts dimming. This could easily be the mini version of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which is 100 times the size of this. The Penna river flows beautifully between the rock formations. I honestly just sat there taking in the gorgeous view and scenery until it started becoming dark. If you ever have the chance of driving down to this place, I wouldn't even allow you to think twice.
If you've come all the way to Gandikota it would be a miss if you didn't visit the Belum caves on the way back. We checked out of our hotel in the morning, and the drive was beautiful. Blue sky, green grassy landscape with windmills everywhere. Once you spot the huge hill with the word "Belum" written on it next to the Buddha statue, you'll know you've arrived. The caves as I heard were pretty big (2nd largest cave in India and about 3299m with a depth of 46m.) and so we decided to take a guide along with us, because who better could guide us down there? (didn't wanna be lost inside, for real.) Once you're inside, you'd realise with time that the oxygen content down there is....pretty low. There were blowers placed inside to allow fresh air to flow in but that too felt insufficient at times. It got pretty humid at certain points and some passage ways became so narrow that you needed to crawl your way out. We tried our best to go as deep as we could but after a certain point we stopped and decided to head back. All in all, it was a very different experience, if you are successful in exploring all parts of the cave, you'd be superman. Sigh.
My weekend seemed pretty eventful after this trip of having discovered the nicest places that I had very less idea of that even existed! My pictures dont even reflect half the beauty of this place, but you MUST go here atleast once in your life if the Grand Canyon of Arizona has not already been ticked off your bucket list.
Here's a small video I made on the trip: https://youtu.be/-WeXy8wFHe4
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