In the first week of February, five of us along with some family members left for Vijayawada to attend a family function of a Stockist.Not many of us had the chance to visit the Krishna river belt, which lies in close proximity to Vijayawada.Hence we decided to explore the place and some other places of tourist interest nearby.
We reached Vijayawada early in the morning and one of our colleagues had made prior arrangements for stay in a hotel. Some really clean roads led us to the accommodation, form where we started our journey at 8.00in the morning.
Our first stop wasAmravati, which houses a big temple of lord Amareshwar and Balachamundi. The lingais very tall scaling about 14 feet and the locals informed us that 27 feet is buried below the ground. The steps we took to climb up to the sanctum could well explain this.
Right adjacent was theDhyana Buddhaproject,ahuge Buddha statue that is under construction and at its final stages looked quite attractive.Though there are some fairly good plaster statues around the shrine which are worth a look. This place was also visited by Dalai Lama, the Buddhist leader, a few years ago,as it is believed that lord Buddha had visitedAmravati while venturing across India to spread and propagate the message of Buddhism.
Next we visited the Ulikondacaves, which are a three-storied construction, carved completely out of rocks and preserved as a monument of historic value. The caves date back to the 2nd century AD. Weclimbed all the way up and were surprised to find idols of lord Vishnuwith his consorts and Anjaneya(Hanuman).
Then we moved to Mangalagiriwhere we have visited the Lakshmi Narasimha temple situated in the midst of the city and Panaka Narasimhatemple located at the top of a hill.
In the evening we visited the famousKanaka Durga temple of Vijayawada on the top of Indrakeelagiri hill. We covered the distance by a car, all the way to the hilltop. The journey was pretty easy and we were good a good sight of goddess Durga Devi, a popular Hindu deity and also lord Malleswara.
We had a reasonably good and divine time at Vijayawada, but the highlight of the trip remained our interaction with a local, whom we met on the way to Mangalagiri. We saw many Massey Ferguson (MF) tractors throughout our journey and decided to have an interaction with one of the tractors drivers named Narasimha Rao. Narasimha shared that MF tractors were quite popular in the area and all the users he knew were happy with the performance of the tractor. He was overwhelmed to learn that we work for TAFE, the company that manufactures and sells MF tractors in India and was kind enough to thank us on behalf of his friends and other MF tractor users. We were touched and took some pictures with him to freeze our moment of joy and contentment.
Our two-day trip to Andhra Pradesh was an exciting one!