Warangal was the capital of the Kakatiya kingdom, which covered the greater part of present-day Andhra Pradesh from the late 12th to early 14th centuries until it was conquered by the Tughlaqs of Delhi. The Hindu Kakatiyas were great builders and patrons of Telugu literature and arts, and it was during their reign that the Chalukyan style of temple architecture reached its pinnacle.
Category: Andhra Pradesh
Visakhapatnam – also called Vizag (vie-zag) – is Andhra Pradesh’s second-largest city, though it feels more like an ageing beach-resort town. It’s famous for shipbuilding and steel manufacturing, and now it’s also an up-and-comer in the call-centre, software and film industries. But we love it for its kitschy coasts. The run-down boardwalk along Ramakrishna Beach has lots of spunk, and the beach at nearby Rushikonda is one of Andhra’s best. Vizag is also a base for visits to the Araku Valley.
Vijayawada, at the head of the delta of the mighty Krishna River, is considered by many to be the heart of Andhra culture and language. It’s also an important Hindu site, both for its Durga temple and the Krishna Pushkaram, held every 12 years, when Lord Pushkara is believed to reside in the River Krishna. Nearby Amaravathi, meanwhile, was a centre of Buddhist learning and practise for many centuries.
The holy hill of Tirumala is one of the most visited pilgrimage centres in India – and indeed the world: it’s said that Venkateshwara Temple eclipses Jerusalem, Rome and Mecca for sheer numbers of pilgrims.
Prasanthi Nilayam (Abode of Highest Peace), in the southwestern corner of Andhra Pradesh at Puttaparthi, is the main ashram of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, who has a huge following in India and around the globe. He set up this ashram 40 years ago, and spends most of the year here.
The ancient remains at this site, 150km southeast of Hyderabad, were discovered in 1926 by archaeologist AR Saraswathi. In 1953, when it became known that a massive hydroelectric project would soon create the Nagarjuna Sagar reservoir, which would flood the area, a major six-year excavation was undertaken to unearth the area’s many Buddhist ruins: stupas, viharas, chaityas (temples) and mandapas (pillared pavilions), as well as some outstanding examples of white-marble depictions of the Buddha’s life. The finds were reassembled on Nagarjunakonda, an island in the middle of the dam.
Hyderabad and Secunderabad, City of Pearls, was once the seat of the powerful Qutb Shahi and Asaf Jahi dynasties. Today Hyderabad’s west side is, with Bengaluru (Bangalore), the seat of India’s mighty software dynasty; ‘Cyberabad’ generates jobs, wealth and posh lounges like she was born to do it. Opulence, it would seem, is in this city’s genes.
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Andhra Pradesh India Travel
Aside from tens of millions of pilgrims, not many people make the trip to Andhra Pradesh. But Andhra’s a place with subtle charms, quiet traditions and a long history of spiritual scholarship and religious harmony. The state is 95% Hindu, but you wouldn’t know it in the capital’s Old City, where Islamic monuments and the call of the muezzin are more ubiquitous than the garlanded, twinkling tableaux of Ganesh. The city’s rich Islamic history announces itself in Hyderabad’s huge, lavish mosques, its opulent palaces and the stately Qutb Shahi tombs – but also, more softly, in a tiny spiral staircase in the Charminar and in the sounds of Urdu floating through the air.