The unexplored and the adventurous Gandikota
Go to Google type-in Gandikota and hit search. I bet this is gonna be your next trip.
My trip to Gandikota was a purely a game of destiny.... At several instances I had lost hope, I even called up my mom once to inform her that I am coming home.
But I was destined to go on this trip, that's Y after all those hiccups I boarded the train. At first it was one of my teammate who was on leave on that week due to which I was denied the leaves by my TL, then couple of days before the D day, his plan got canceled. I knew this was my only chance, by using all my convincing power I had to convince my TL to hand me a 2 day leave and an afternoon shift so that I can board the train at night…. All this only to understand that the train was scheduled for 8:30pm (Chennai Express) and my shift was supposed to end at 10…….. The D day arrived I left my house @12:30pm for office @ Chandivli with my new rucksack and with a 'Jo hoga dekha jayega' attitude. I reported in at 1:45pm finished my work by 3pm and went to play TT, came back to my desk at 7 when my (night) TL would come-in. Sat at my desk till 7:30pm and left the office without informing anyone. There was a lot of traffic so getting a cab was out of option. No second thoughts ran as fast as I can to the metro station. Reached ghatkopar station Via metro at 7:50 and I was super happy since I was on schedule, informed my friends the same who had a seat reserved for me in the general compartment of the Chennai Express. Unfortunately that night all trains leading to Dadar were late and I was still standing at Ghatkopar till 8:10. Then I got a call from Arun asking about my status, it was then I called up my mom to say that I am coming home, but then I got a call from Arun who told me to try my luck and try to catch the same train from Kalyan and so I left... Luckily I got there first.... that’s when I met Siddharth who was waiting for the same train, looking at my backpack he asked me where I was heading, upon talking further he told me even he didn't have any reserved tickets, so I told him to join us... Upon entering the train I received a grand welcome, friends started abusing me and hitting me, rest of the people in the compartment was looking at me as if I was a criminal... These are the folks who helped my friends secure a seat for me.
And thus the train journey began....
We started exchanging our travel stories. Sid started telling us about his trip to tomorrowland ... You won’t believe it just as we didn’t in the beginning, but this guy actually won an all expense paid trip to tomorrowland sponsored by Budweiser and all he did was copied an answer which was already answered by someone else on the Budweiser's twitter page and pasted it with his name, and his name came up in the draw. A moment of silence ran across our train section for sometime unable to digest this, we started to cross question him. The thing was that we didn’t want to believe it. Maybe we wouldn’t have been this sad if he had paid for the trip.... Time passed by and we eventually moved on, and the stories started flowing in "funny ones" mostly and the entire compartment laughed with us.... Time passed by …. the night was a bit hectic with people trying to sleep anywhere U can think of, standing, sitting and some sleeping between other's legs...
In the morning Sid told us how he met a guy through couchsurfing and he slowly started convincing us to come to Hampi with him. Hampi was always there on our mind since a long time so we actually started thinking about it, besides he said he has some contacts over there to get us food for cheap and a nice place to camp for the night. Just before reaching Guntakal we decided to go to Hampi for a day and then leave for Gandikota. No further questions asked ....
Got down at Guntakal with Sid. Next up Bellary which took us another an hr to reach (There are also buses available from Bellary bus stand to Hospet). (Do buy tickets as there are strict ticket checking at all the stations ;-p)
It took us aprox 1.5 hours to reach Hospet. There are KSRTC buses available (till 8pm) at frequent intervals from Hospet railway station to Hampi and it takes around 30 mins to reach Hampi (20Rs).
The best place to stay is across the river beside this temple, (The Hippie spot) according to this mallu guy in the pic, and right he was....
Although we stayed in Manju Hotel with our own tent (they charge you 150 per tent), there are lots of hotels out there which provides a similar service.
There are very few direct trains available for Hospet, but instead you can get down at Guntakal or Hubli and then get a connecting train or Bus. Most of the places are nearby so its better to hire a cycle or a moped to roam around it's a lot more fun than bikes or scooty