Kuntala - Hyderabad : The Road Trip

Blame it on Murphy's law but that was just the best weather to sleep. Rainy.. dark.. cloudy... and Cold! Well it could be attributed to the fact that we all woke up at 5.30 to begin our trip. With hazy eyes and heavy hearts, we hit the road. We were out of the city by 6.30 as we cruised along the Medchal highway. A couple of drizzles and a railway gate later, we stopped at an obscure village to have awesome sambar idly and piping hot Upma!

Originally we planned to cover the stretch of 250 Kms from Hyderabad to Kuntala falls in 4 -5 hours. But given our regular pit-stops every other hour to admire mother nature took us about 7 hours to reach Nirmal which is 210 from Hyderabad. We stopped to admire lush green meadows at one point and an old dilapidated sentry tower which resembled the scenes from "Dil Chahta hai" a few kms later. These detours turned out brilliant!





Once we were at Nirmal we finished with out lunch at Hotel Mayuri which was supposed to be the best in town(hated it though). We picked up a few beers and headed for Pochera Waterfalls.
The route to the waterfalls was pretty scenic and also included a small stretch of ghats along the NH5. There was greenery all around. The whole day we never caught sight of the sun which made it even more perfect for such a trip.

Though there wasn't too much water around, we enjoyed getting soaked under the water and even ventured into areas we werent officially supposed to go. After about 2 hours at this place we proceeded to Kuntala which was 10 kms off the highway. The walk down to Kuntala was about a 1000 steps and the waterfall was the highest in AP. We once again treaded on the slippery rocks, and climbed the rocks along the waterfall. We managed to give the camera a dip in the holy Kuntala water after which it refused to function anymore.

The most difficult part of the journey was the night drive along the NH5. We started back to Hyderabad at 6.30 and had our dinner at Kamareddi. Owing to the asshole lorry drivers who wouldn't dim their lights on the highway and the heavy downpour, we reached Hyderabad at 11.00.


Route: Hyderabad - Kamareddi - Nirmal - Pochera - Kuntala - Hyderabad.
Vehicle : Maruti 800 (10 years old) - A whopping 17kmpl !!
Cost: 4 of us and 600 for each including fuel, food and beer!