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Short road trip to the Araku Valley in our Maruti Jimny

My son was impressed with how the 4x4 SUV easily handled the off-road stretches. He drives an Audi A5 in the USA.

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Being a local of Visakhapatnam living by the beach at 0 feet above MSL, we take for granted the presence of Araku just 3 hours away reaching a peak height of more than 4K feet above MSL.

The last time I visited Araku was in 2002 when my son was 5 years old and we were just watching the old videos of that trip. My son who is a Professor now in the USA came for a visit to India and suggested that we should go visit Araku again now and shoot videos at the same places as in 2002. As he is working from home on weekdays, I am forced to plan the trip on a weekend (weekend traffic in Araku is a nightmare as per my friends). I checked online for AP tourism resort accommodation and found that there is no vacancy on the weekends but available on weekdays. I kept refreshing the page multiple times for a couple of hours, and suddenly 2 suites were vacant and I immediately booked them.

We started in the morning at 7 am and the journey for the first half was smooth as it is a state highway. The ghat section at the peak is gridlocked with cars parked on both sides for views and the traffic especially tourist buses in both directions cannot pass through the narrow place available in between. We were standing still at one place for about 2 hours and finally, the police cleared the gridlock. Surprised to see the police with machine guns.

I drove through the western ghats multiple times and had experience on the hairpin bends. I have never driven on the eastern Ghats, as we usually prefer to go by train for the breathtaking views of the tunnels. Now, we have Vistadome glass coaches with revolving chairs but it is difficult to get seats unless booked much in advance.

Now that we have a mountain goat Jimny, we wanted to try this trip by road. The drive is a cake walk for Jimny. It went in D drive (no where I disengaged the overdrive or put the car in lower gear manually in 2 or L) all the way through all hairpin bends without a sweat. At some places there was a detour due to some construction work and my son was impressed by the way Jimny could handle the off-road in those small stretches with ease due to its high ground clearance (by the way he drives an Audi A5 sports line with a ground clearance of just 4 inches in the USA).

We visited the Padmapuram Botanical Gardens and did the video shoot at the same places where we had shot 2 decades ago back. There is not much change in the garden but it should be appreciated that it has been maintained in the same state for decades.

The tribal museum is a must-visit place with a lot of new additions done recently. Just beside the tribal museum, we have the coffee museum which is also very impressive.

We went to see the Chaparai waterfalls also. The place is very scenic and has nothing much to talk about water falling (We had seen many waterfalls like Niagara and hence not disappointed).

Bora Caves. This is an amazing place to visit. Nothing much changed in the last 2 decades wrt to facilities except for the modern lighting done by the tourism department.

Lastly, I am impressed by the government resort where we stayed overnight (The temp was 9 degrees centigrade as per the car dashboard in the morning at the resort. The news says it is the lowest of the season at 3.8 degrees C). The whole place is very well maintained including the room. No wonder it is very difficult to get accommodation there.

On our way back to Visakhapatnam, we stopped at an amazing place called Ramanarayanam near Vizianagaram. The temple was constructed over 15 acres of area based on Ramayana and the temple is designed like a Bow and arrow shape. The complete story of Lord Rama, from his birth to his coronation, is impressively depicted. We were told not to take photos inside.

Ghat Section views:

Padmapuram Gardens:

Tribal and Coffee Museums:

Borra Caves:

Resort:

Ramnarayanam Temple:

Chaparai Waterfalls:

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