0 Kurnool and Alampur

Kurnool was one of the destinations I frequently visited in Andhrapradesh during the 90s. The town’s situated on the east bank of river Tungabadhra. Incidentally the city is only on the east bank. On the west bank are the industries of TGV group.

During one of the visits, we went for a walk in the river bed. Rivers in Rayalseema belt are mostly shallow and wide. The bridges across the rivers are long. I’ve hardly seen rivers flow in this region, except for this one- Tungabadhra and Krishna.

It was a summer evening; the breeze was refreshing after a day of traveling from Bangalore and then work at one of TGV factories. As we entered the river bed, we noticed musk melon creepers… it was towards the end of the season, most of them were dry. The Kurnool variety musk melon is very popular.

Walking on dry sand was fun and needed lot of effort. As we approached the waters, I noticed this lovely little anchor. It was beautiful!

Wondering what an anchor is doing here? Small boats are used here to ferry people across the river from the town to the factories. I rode one of the bigger ones, powered by a diesel engine, couple of times. The route was a round-about one since it had to be navigated through the deepest parts of the river.

In the picture above, you can see a part of the ruins of the fort supposedly built during Tipu Sultan’s reign. Kurnool has its place in Andhra history.

During another visit, we decided to check out other historical monuments within the city. This one is a small structure built like a fort, it's called as Kondareddy Buruju.

The windows are carved out of single slabs of stones.

Look at the walls and the floor… they look solid.

We spent some 45 minutes looking around. We could get a 360 degree of the flat city. Kurnool’s and Davangere are two towns which are real flat.

During the same visit, we heard about Alampur, a little temple village about 22km from Kurnool. We got see few temples, a mosque and almost dry lake bed.

One of the temples in the outskirts of the village was not originally built here. It’s shifted from another village which is presently under the waters of a reservoir. ASI has put in lots of efforts into this project; mark every stone and dismantle the temple, shift the stones and assemble it back at Alampur. In fact, Alalmpur has lot of historical importance.

The sculptures are beautifully decorated with floral and geometrical designs. Every sculpture tells a story from the Hindu mythology. In the picture below, you see a half man-half woman figure in the entrance of the temple. The guide told us a story behind the temple but I cannot recall any of it.

This temple could be one of the experimental temples.

And this snake god carving (which was lying out on the street) is supposed to have been to Paris and back for an art exhibition. There’s a small museum too with a small collection of stone sculptures.

We were almost done and we were passing the mosque within the temple complex and we noticed a huge cane basket inverted over a platform. Out of curiosity we asked a kid what was under that? Chicken? Out of no-where a bunch of kids were on the scene and a Mullah cam and moved the ‘cane basket’. Wow! I was awe-struck seeing a bowl carved out of black granite.

The Mullah told us that during festivals, this bowl would be filled with food and people would have handfuls out of it. The carvings on the sides are intricate. This picture does not tell much, you have to see it live. If not for anything in Alampur, you have to visit the place just to see this stone bowl.

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Detail: Kurnool and Alampur

0 Chilamkur to Kurnool

Our maiden visit to Chilamkur Cement Works one of the many cement plants of India Cements Limited. It is located in Andhra's Kadapa district, a dry and hot place. Dad, Praveen, Anish and I in our van. We reached ICL around 1-30AM. The factory and the staff colony are near-by. Mr. Sastry of Instrumentation Department looked pretty patient even though we disturbed his sleep. He arranged for us to be put up at the guest house. We were at the guest house annexe, a sparsely furnished two bedroom house with big lizards crawling on it's cracked walls.

Later in the morning we visited the factory; instrumentation department and the plant weigh bridge were our destination. We got an opportunity to see the control room of a cement plant ...it looked pretty sophisticated. The weigh bridge was not in working condition and we were supposed to give a quote to rectify it ...make it work. It seems the system had hardly worked since the day it was installed. We studied the weigh bridge and suggested change of load cells ...overall we would be simplifying the entire mechanism. The platform was a cement cast deck and it looked real solid. If I'm not mistaken the 9m x 3m platform weighed close to 10 tonnes. The meeting was over and our next destination was Kurnool.

We left Chilamkur after breakfast and our route as suggested by local people-

• Chilamkur
• Proddatur
• Jammalmadugu
• Gollapalle
• Kolimigundla
• Owk
• Banaganapalli
• Betamcharla
• Orvakal
• Kurnool

We heard about Owk reservoir and decided to visit it. I remember it was Sunday but cannot recall the name of the place we bought warm beer bottles. I was the only teetotaler of the group. I wondered how these people would be drinking in hot and sunny weather. On the way to th dam we stopped at a stream to freshen ourselves. Dad put the bottles in the stream bed and let them cool. About the dam we were heading to; it was a minor river hence the dam was not a big one. The dam was open to public and we could see people all over the place ...no restrictions, no security, nothing. As we drove up the dam to get a better view of the whole place, we were shocked to see dead fish floating in water, silvery and white, lots of them ... in hundreds. We drove our van right up to the crest gates... point where cement structure meets the steel structure of the crest gates mechanism. Several steel plates were missing exposing huge gaps in the floor. One careless move here could send the person down into the reservoir. We spent some time looking around. The wall was narrow and we tried reversing the van but we could not so we went back in reverse all the way back. We picked up Dad and resumed our journey.

We stopped for lunch at a khanavali (family managed joint which serves home made food). On the menu was rice meals, chicken dishes and mutton dishes ... all in typical Andhra style. While Dad, Praveen and Anish ordered some chicken dish I settled for a veg meal. Andhra meals are spicy by default with options for extra spice. 3 types of chutneys were served, made of green, red and white chillies. Going by the colors, red was hot, green was hotter and white was guaranteed to make a turn your mouth into a blast furnace. I did not want to try out any of them ...the after effects can be ... what do is say ... mouth is not the only part that would on fire, even the stomach would be on fire. By the end of the meal Dad, Praveen and Anish were gasping for air and gulping down water.

We resumed our journey towards Kurnool. Small hills are scattered over this region with roads running through them. The journey was quite interesting ... a short stretch of road was carved over a rocky hill ... effects of light and shadow was something to be photographed but unfortunately those days we never used to carry cameras with us. We placed through many villages and small towns. One of the towns name was Owk ...I liked the name. Towns and villages between Owk and Betamcharla are full of stone cutting mills ...mostly Cuddapah stone slabs. We reached NH18... Kurnool was another 40 kilometers or so.

Years later, I realized Andhra was close to my heart ...it's people and culture are close to Karnataka's.

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Detail: Chilamkur to Kurnool

0 Journey in a truck

Some time 2001

Of all my journeys, this one was very unique. Praveen and I traveled in a truck along with our consignment of weigh bridge parts being shipped to SRAACL's coal based (co-generation) power plant at Gondiparla, Kurnool. It was a 375 kilometer overnight journey. The road was good. The truck was in good running condition even though it was pretty old. The driver was a soft-spoken person but highly experienced and his assistant (what we commonly refer to as cleaner), also a soft-spoken person, was a simple character who would just do what his boss told him. They were a great team, very dedicated to truck and their profession.

The weigh bridge was fabricated by E Shashikumar & team at a nondescript workshop in Peenya Industrial Area ...it was more an open plot which is much more suited for fabricating a 9m x 3m weigh bridge weighing around 7 tonnes. The longest items were two 9m ISMB400 beams. Shashi & team loaded the items into the truck in about two hours and I prepared necessary papers. An advance was paid to the driver. We were all set to go.




A 6-wheeler truck cargo area measures about 4.5m. The two 9m beams had to be placed length-wise with remaining things placed over them. The beams were projecting 4.5m behind the truck! Totally illegal and seriously dangerous but in this business it was not economically feasible to hire a trailer to transport these items. Our truck driver assured that it was his responsibility to transport them safely. I kept my fingers crossed and my mind would not rest till these beams were unloaded. To warn other drivers we tied a piece of red cloth ...this was mandatory for any load sticking out from the back side of a goods vehicle.

We left Peenya round about 5pm. We were four of us in the cabin. Praveen and I had to share one bench with the cleaner. And like any other cleaner his favorite spot was next to the left door. Every now and then he would check the cargo area, especially the beams. There were few known hurdles, 2 or 3 RTO check-posts. Apart from the check-posts, RTO squads would be prowling the highway. I was little worried but our driver was cool and composed. We sailed past all check posts ...unbelievable! As we pulled away from Bangalore, we were cruising between 40 and 50 kmph ...that's when we felt cool breeze blowing in from under the seat. There was a gap in the floor and no possible way to close it. As the journey wore deeper into the night the air was getting colder and my blanket did not help much.

We had 3 or 4 stops; one for dinner and rest for tea. Around midnight, some where between Penukonda and Anantapur we saw trucks being stopped by a RTO squad. Our driver carefully parked the truck such that none of the squad members would notice the beams sticking out. I was calculating how much we might have to cough up ...the driver gave a twenty rupee note to the cleaner and told him to hand it over to one particular squad member and come back. The cleaner took the money and hesitated, the driver told him not to speak anything and asked him to hurry up ...the timing was crucial I guess. As told cleaner gave the money and was back in the truck in no time. In the mean time, our driver had engaged the first gear and ready to take off ...I was skeptical if twenty rupees would work for 4.5m of load sticking out from the back of this truck. We started moving and that's when the guy who took the money noticed the beams and pointed it to his superior who was busy booking cases and collecting fines. We picked up speed as the guy was shouting at us to stop but the driver did not. He kept checking the rear-view mirror for few minutes, nobody chasing us. That's it, we were cruising as though nothing had happened. Praveen and I admired our drivers skill in handling the situation. Very smart indeed.

Neither Praveen nor me could sleep because of the cold air blowing into the cabin. That served our intention of being on this journey ...we had to stay awake. We were on Kurnool by-pass by dawn. Praveen and I went to Kurnool town, checked into Mourya Inn, freshened up and wen back the truck. A 20 km drive and soon we were at the factory gates. Material was inspected and cleared to be unloaded at site. As were waiting at the gates to exit some confusion ccreated by one of the security guards caused our driver to reverse the truck and the beams damaged a truck parked behind. We wasted an hour sorting out the problem ...I guess we paid some 200 rupees to the driver which would be his pocket money for the day. Finally, the consignment was unloaded at weigh bridge site and we were relieved. We paid the balance as agreed and gave a small tip for the good service rendered.

Dealing with truck drivers is not something one can like but this was different. It was an experience to remember.

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Detail: Journey in a truck

0 Ramagundam to Byadgi

With the experiment not successful, Praveen and me decided to leave Ramagundam. We took an early morning bus to Hyderabad, 300+ kilometers journey... reached Hyderabd afternoon. We alighted and almost immediately boareded the Kurnool bus, 250+ kms to go... reached Kurnool by 5pm. Went to Mourya Inn where we had parked our Omni.

We had to attend a service call at APMC, Byadgi... our route would be Bellary, Sandur, Harihar and Byadgi. We planned to go upto Bellary and break our journey. It was dusk when we started our second part of the journey. As we reached Bellary, I said we'll go upto Hospet, just 40kms more. It was 9-30 or 10pm when we touched Sandur.


We thought we'll have dinner and then look for a hotel. During dinner, I asked Praveen "How about going till Ranebennur?"

We resumed out journey... lonely roads through one of the major mining belts of Karnataka. The roads were not so good, may be that helped me keep awake. Praveen and I had good understanding when it came to driving. He's was a good navigator and I could trust his judgement, he rarely made mistakes. We stopped for tea at a small town, I think Harpanahalli. We reached Harihar by 2-30am. Now, we had to cover a short stretch on NH4, just 22km. Ranebennur at 3AM.

850km in 21 hours!

Exhausted, still I had a bath and hit the sack. Woke up at 10 next morning and went on to Byadgi...

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Detail: Ramagundam to Byadgi