Sunday, January 23, 2005
Ride to Pocharam
Friday was a holiday for me. That makes in two long weekends in a row. I decided to set out on a motorcyle drive to the Pocharam forest reserve with a few guys from work. Pocharam is about 160 km from my place, so the drive is fairly short compared to the ones that I have undertaken recently. None the less, I was fairly excited about it and we set out around 5 AM in the morning.
Enroute, we stopped at a church in Medak that was built about 100 years ago when a famine struck the region. The church is famous for its stain glass work on the three huge windows and they loOk beautiful in day light. The picture below is from the east facing window, depicting the birth of jesus christ.
The locals at Medak suggested that we also visit the Medak fort. The fort apparently was built during the Kakatiya period and it served as an outpost to the Telangana region. On top of one of the mounds at the fort is a 17th century cannon, about 3.5 meters long, made with solid iron. Its remarkable that the cannon still survives today, being exposed to the elements as it is. In the picture below you can actually see the fort in the background. What you cant see though, are the beautiful trident engravings on the cannon.
On the top of this fort is a Masjid, built during the reign of Aurangazeb. There are steps leading up to the terrace of this Masjid, which if you look up from below seem like they are leading straight up into heaven, for all you see are white-steps and blue sky at the end of it. I can barely describe the exhilaration I felt when I first saw it.
We then proceeded towards Pocharam which is about 15 km from Medak. Pocharam forest was the favourite hunting ground of the Nizam and he declared it as a wild life sanctuary in the early part of 20th century. We hardly saw any wild-life though. Infact there wasn't much of the forest left to see too. The approach road was however breath-taking and was among the high-points of the ride. We stopped for a breather at a government inspection bungalow. The picture below is taken on a bylane from the main highway leading upto the bungalow. The picture hardly does justice to this scene below. I wish there was a way to even capture the smells of the place.
Right next to the bungalow is the Pocharam dam, a peaceful and serene sight. If only there was more water there. Missing also (in the picture) are the sights and sound of the numerous birds that we saw there.
Ditching our earlier plan of going into the Pocharam forest, we decided to proceed 40 km further down from Pocharam to Nizamsagar, a reservoir constructed across a tributary of the Godavari known as Manjira. One of the best sights at the place is a view of the 5273m long masonry dam ( thanks to a little research on goOgle ) with a narrow motorable road on top, on which I rode my bike full-clip. What a rush. The next three pictures are from Nizamsagar :
1. Beautiful rock island bang in the middle of the reservoir.
2. Fishermen at Nizamsagar.
I watched them for about half an hour tugging at the ropes, which moved only about a few feet in the process. Seemed a lot of hardwork for a lot less in return.
3. An old boat stranded (?) on the lake bed.
The reservoir has clearly held much more water in the past. The exposed lake bed has now been turned into farm lands, clearly visible in the background.
And then it was time to get back to the real-world. Overall a great experience. I am now looking forward to my next ride, perhaps to Kuntala falls in Adilabad and perhaps some time real soon.
