Mahanandi: Part 1

I'm typing this on my dad's "EE PC" (sorry bro) , a really tiny laptop, while sitting in a car, on our way back from Mahanandi, a place in the middle of the great state of Andhra Pradesh. I have two backlogged blog entries that I was hoping to finish typing up before this but I just had to write up about this trip.

Apparently my dad visited this place before his marriage and he'd been trying to take my mom on this trip for the last 30 years or so of their marriage. It never worked out for some reason or the other. I had made a flying visit to Hyd to take care of some stuff, and I was here only for Fri, Sat and Sun. I took care of my stuff on Fri and I asked my parents what they would like to do during the weekend. Among a host of other suggestions, my mom threw out the Mahanandi plan. I liked it immediately. It was going to take a 5-6hr drive each way but seeing as my dad wanted to revisit this place so much, I jumped on it.

We woke up at 3am and started getting ready for the trip. Dad got one of the drivers from his company and we took off by 4:30am. I was really looking forward to driving on the newly opened PV Narasimha Rao expressway in the city. It was fun, I can see how young people in the city would love to drive on this road at night. The entire road is basically a flyover, and it is not flat, so you feel like you're floating down a river of lights as you cruise on this 11kms long highway. I am not sure of the utility, I don't think it saves more than 15 minutes for the passengers on their way to the airport, and if that's the case, I don't think it's worth it. We passed out almost immediately after leaving the city but woke up around sunrise. It was a really beautiful drive. The weirdest part for me was seeing herds of camels walking on the highway. What were camels doing in this part of the country! The highway itself was very nice and well maintained. The roads were clean and smooth, a far cry from the time our family took to Tirupathi many years ago.

Of course, the biggest problem with a trip this long is the availability (or lack) of bathroom facilities. At one point we spent 30 mins just looking for a neat restaurant with a bathroom. But even accounting for that and three other stops for coffee and food, we reached our destination about 6 hours after we started.