A day trip to Ananthagiri, Vikarabad

( Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter )

Hi All,

This is Naga from the gang of Shutterbugs( a passion for photography) you'll get to know by reading further. This blog is about our 1day trip to Ananthagiri Forest at Vikarabad.

We would like to visit a place which is near to hyderabad So that we can cover our trip in a day or even less and also should have good scenic beauty (As this is a monsoon season we expect to see lot of greenery in the forest area).  when we visited ICRISAT last week we found lot of birds and greenery inside (looks like a forest)  got some nice pictures of birds over there. At that time we got an idea to visit a forest in this monsoon season;which should be very near to hyderabad so that, we can complete our trip in 1 day. Then our discussion started about the place and got confirmed one such nice place of Anantagiri Forest near to Vikarabad in RangaReddy district situated at a distance of 90km from Hyd.

had a 'Garam Chai' at Outer Ring Road, Hyd (time: 4am) 

A day before we discussed on mobile conference about the plan and timings once again for the trip..., Finally we four came to a conclusion to start the trip as early as possible in the early morning before sun rise.(Bhanu,Bhattu & me -Naga started   around 3:25am  from secunderabad, on the way we picked mr.Guru at mindspace (as he is on the night shifts) around 3:50am, had a little brk at the begining of ORR(outer ring road) and had a Garam chai at tea stall and started our journey towards Ananthagiri. 

awesome view from top fo the Ananthagiri Hillls

The forest is another 5 kilometers from here. we reached there in just 10 mins, it was a lovely Ghat road and the sun is still yet to wake up. Road is not that much good but the scenic beauty either sides of the road was awesome, it was pleasure riding on this road, 

Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple

At last, we reached the destination Ananthagiri  around 6:15am, (we decided to visit the temple first, I forgot to say, Ananthagiri is firstly famous for the temple of Anantha Padmanabha Swamy its a real ancient temple and its really peaceful.)

Naga, Guru, Bhattu & Bhanu+car

we have gone to the hill station, we could see many villages and greenery area from there and on top of all, the climate was superb. we spent some time taken few nice photos with our DSLR's. Later we started moved back towards to the forest area in order to find and to capture few photos of birds, trees on hill area which is behind the T.B. hospital.


In the forest with the awesome green plantations we found lot of birds (especially lot of variety of parrots), Bulbuls, Maina, Lonchura,Ashy Prinia, lot of Butterflies Swallowtails etc and also we saw some ancient trees there. find the more bird pics in the following link : (YET TO UPDATE THE LINKS)

Lot of birds in Ananthagiri Forest area 

we thought of taking as many snaps as possible of everlasting photos of wild life (birds, Trees, grass) and water drops on the leaves, spider webs with few droplets of fog But unfortunately we could not walk more then 10 steps as we were damn hungry because we could hear our own tummies making naughty naughty wild sounds which cant be bearable by the birds as they were flying so high. so we have to feed our tummies with some food. we got into  a small hut where there are providing some food so we ordered idly. We ordered 4 plates of idly twice as they prepared traditionally it was little tasty and added to that we had with some traditional spicy powder later we had cup of tea and at last our tummy's calmed down... then we decided to continue our journey with our photo gear(kits) towards down to the temple area into the deep forest. After the lake there is a way(public way general road) which goes into the deep forest.

a hut inside the forest

We though that we wont find lot of birds in the public way then we decided to go in an other way towards to the forest hill area which surrounds full of green leaves and trees(we could find very peaceful and silence) in order to find some birds to take some pictures.

Naga in the Forest

 Entering into the forest again, we we could able to listen some sounds of birds when we went deeper we identified few animals drinking water and playing, we were very eager to capture some snaps but we got disappointed as we could not see a lot, later after walking some more distance Ohhh my god we have seen many birds flying and making sounds, we were very happy and captured as many as possible, the forest is awesome  (which we could find very peaceful and silence).

we decided to climb the hill area in the deep forest greenery area. climbing up was not that hard, the recent rains made paths on the mountain and we followed them. we climbed the other mountain in front of us, we saw some peacocks sounds and other rare birds. we have taken some nice snaps of the nature and also of few birds. This was the place we found lot of Spider's and spiders families most. Then we came back to the regular public way, which takes us towards to the temple again, we were totally exhausted, all the faces covered with sweats in that climate...but was refreshing. 

Puncture shop at Kotepally-Dam entrance road

This time we went to the Haritha resort.. we had our lunch. At around 1:30pm we started to Kotepally Check-Dam. while going towards Kotepally-dam unfortunately our car tire got flat, luckily on the way near by we found one small mechanic shed got it repaired and started towards dam road. 

Kotepally Dam road starts here

Kotepally-Dam with full of water

As we  expected there will be some   water and we could enjoy at the place. but to our utmost surprise we were shocked the dam was fully filled with the water and it is overflowing on the roads towards to an other side of the forest area. that was looking very beautiful.we enjoyed, had a bath under the flowing water, and played in water etc ....

 there were lots of people from nearby villages, as it was a sunday. after our funny  enjoyment under the water we got freshed and we decided to take few snaps of the birds near by the dam.  Luckily we have found two Kingfisher birds(hunting the fishes from sky) with few of rare birds.


Everybody's faces started looking wearied out...so we decided to leave back home..we had a little dinner at vikarabad-bawarchi then our journey started back to Hyderabad returned to our homes by around 9'o'clock.

Overall...the trip was awesome above what we expected....the only thing u need is company of a nice group of friends :)