Musafir

As we finished our breakfast and came outside, the deck was bustling with activity. The tour organizers arranged a small show of dances and songs and that was underway on the upper deck. We were all enjoying below. The thing that strikes everyone is the endless water and the hills at a distance. It is one feeling that is better experienced personally. Some of the other things i remember are the High Tension Electrical Tower in the river. The river itself is around 50 feet deep. So the tower should be somewhere around 100 feet. 

As the boat catches speed, white water forms. It is an amazing feeling to place your feet in that water along with the stream. And you are so close to water that it sprinkles on your faces with cold breeze. As you pass through the endless river forward, the tour organizers tell about the local legends associated with that area.

Even if we were supposed to travel around 60 kilometres on the river, it did not seem boring. There were lot of things to catch up about each other and we were continuously talking appreciating the serene beauty. As you move on, you see  fishermen with small boats and also coracle ferries where the depth is less. As this area comes under the tropical rain forest, it drizzles at least once in a day. At one point, there is almost a 90 degree turn in the river and we see the Paapi Kondalu for the first time.

The Paapi Kondalu seems almost flat at a distance, but as we go nearer they become rugged with stone. The atmosphere turns more chilly as we go near as the hills are at height. As we move along, there is a place where we see small huts on the river bank. This is part of a tour package that we can spend a night in these huts, sleeping on sand and gazing at the black starry sky. This should be an amazing experience with the sound of the water and nothing else.  Many movies are shot in these hills and in fact one very famous hero was shooting at that location when we passed by.

There is one particular location in the onward journey which is memorable with the boat passing through a very narrow path between hills on either side. The distance between the hills in 100 mts and this is the place where the depth is the most in the entire journey. It is almost 1 PM now and we had to break for lunch. This typical South Indian lunch is prepared in other boats and transferred into this midway and is delicious. We took time with the lunch and again came over to the deck. It was quite hot with the heat soaring at around 38 degrees.

We had thought to relax a bit after the heavy lunch and we heard from the captain  that we would be reaching our destination on our onward Journey. We reached “Perantalapalli” at around 2 PM and got down to visit the place.

To be continued…