Morning around 4.30am four of us started from hyderabad to kurnool ( to pick 2 of our friends coming from bangalore). we reached kurnool railway station by 8.45am. Our plan is to cover YAGANTI and BELLUM CAVES today . we had breakfast in kurnool and headed towards Yaganti. Near banaganapalli we missed a turn towards yaganti and drove almost 40kms ahead from the point where the turn should be taken. so we decided to go to bellum caves directly and headed towards owk.... it was 12.30pm by the time we reached owk, we had snaks in owk and headed towards bellum caves.
from owk with in 45mins to 1h we reached BELUM CAVES
Belum caves claimed to be asias 2nd longest caves. I was really excited since that was for the first time im gonna see caves in my life and that too asias longest caves. so-many things were running in the background of my brain..... will it be dark inside, am i gonna get scared, should i carry a torch light or something etc etc etc
i was expecting caves with full off stalactites and stalagmites. No signs of those formation,too many lights all over and wide chambers gave artificial feel. was little disappointing initially. As we walked farther, path started becoming narrow and those lovely curves formed by constant flow of underground water for thousands of years, were amazing to watch.its tough to predict the beauty of nature.......
150 feet below the ground level, this is the lowest point in the cave .......
we got to know from a guard that only 1.5km length is open to tourists. we want to know how exactly the untouched part of the cave looks like and started the mission of exploring. we found a small passage which has no lights at all, we used our phone flashlights to get into that passage. It was so dark, wet all over and we could feel water drops falling on us.at one point we couldn't stand straight, we felt something hanging from the top. here finally i saw huge formations of stalactites and stalagmites. it was too suffocating inside and it became tough to even walk since it was too slipper, dark and have no clue when our heads gonna get banged ...... we took a you turn
By the way it was scary inside ..........
we came out by 5pm, exact closing time. had snacks,relaxed for about 30mins and headed towards gandikota 60km from belum caves.