I keep calling this a solo road trip but my companion was my trusted “Dusty”, my Mahindra Thar 4×4.
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Chasing the Sun at Gandikota Fort
I love solo wanderings where I can practice my hobby of photography to my heart’s content. Just me, my car and my camera, and a good location. I love walking around for hours, searching for landscapes and exploring different angles and lights for photography.
This is what I did recently at Gandikota Fort in Andhra Pradesh, some 6 hours drive away from Bangalore. Gandikota Fort and the nearby Not caves yet were on my to-visit list for a long time. Finally managed to visit both these places in a quick weekend trip.
Gandikota Fort is a popular tourist destination and is usually crowded with tourists. The fort has plenty of, but all very basic accommodation options ranging from basic lodges to tents, including one resort from the AP tourism department. Unfortunately, none of these options looked too appealing from the online reviews – most of these are not very clean. In fact, the entire area has no good hotel to stay at.
Finally, based on online reviews, booked one hotel called “Royal Palace Residency” in a small town some 15km away from the fort. This place is very basic too – just a roadside lodge with zero amenities or luxuries. However, the room was clean and comfortable, with spotless white sheets and towels, a good working AC (very important in that hot climate there) and again a basic but clean bathroom. That was enough for a solo one-night stay for me. The hotel manager and staff there are extremely friendly and welcoming, and their hospitality was top-class and worth mentioning here.
Overall a good place to stay for a short visit to Gandikota. I was glad I found this place instead of staying on the fort itself (those accommodations did not look good at all when I saw them after reaching there).
Of course, although I keep calling this a solo trip, my companion was my trusted “Dusty”, my Thar 4×4. The small and basic hotel had no parking place as such, and Dusty was parked on the side of a small lane that the hotel is located on. Dusty makes no fuss about parking places and that small roadside spot was OK for a night’s stay.
I drove to Belum Caves first, before reaching Gandikota later that day. Belum Caves are large underground natural caves, with a nicely developed underground walking path through the caves that spans about 3km. I enjoyed walking underground and seeing the caves. However, the lighting in the caves was too bright and colorful for my liking, and it made the caves look artificial – sort of like a movie set or an amusement park setting – instead of getting the feel of seeing real natural wonder (which the caves really are). I was a bit put off by these colorful lighting and did not care to do any photography as such in the caves. Just sharing a couple of photos below to show what I mean.
The nice underground walking path in Belum Caves:
However, such colorful lighting makes the caves look artificial:
Too colorful and bright for my liking:
Keeping aside the colorful lighting part, the caves are indeed nice and quite big. The natural underground formations of various sizes and shapes are nice to see. There are a lot of walking paths underground, some big and some small and narrow where one has to bend down and walk with very limited headroom.
From the caves, I drove to the hotel. After a quick check-in and lunch at a nearby restaurant in the town, I drove straight to Gandikota Fort for the evening photography session. My plan was to spend two sessions walking around the fort. The evening session that day (around 4pm to 7pm) chasing the sunset, and then the next morning session (6am to 8am) chasing the sunrise. The weather is very hot there, and the whole area is open to the sun with no shade whatsoever, and therefore, only the morning and evening times are the right times to venture out there.
The fort is quite big, and there are plenty of locations and viewpoints to walk around. There is a large parking lot outside the fort (where mostly the buses parked), but one can even drive through the fort and park at another parking lot inside the fort too (where most of the cars drove to and parked). I parked in the inside parking lot and wandered around the fort with my camera in my hand.
Dusty in Gandikota Fort:
It was quite hot there, and walking around to various locations within the large fort was a good exercise. After checking out an ancient temple and an ancient mosque, all within the fort premises, I walked to the main attraction, the canyon viewpoint. This fort is famous for the views of a canyon formed by Penna River cutting through the rocky landscapes.
External walls of the fort, overlooking the canyon:
The fort offers breathtaking views all around, especially during sunset and sunrise, and has a lot of historical monuments too. However, unfortunately, it is in a very bad mess due to heavy tourism and crowds. There is trash and garbage (including broken glasses and bottles) everywhere, and it was really sad to see this mess. Car parking was also unregulated and poorly managed. Many cars were parked in a haphazard manner causing problems to other cars moving around. This fort would be an amazing place if kept clean and if the tourist and vehicle movements were regulated and controlled.
There is a walking path to the end of the fort from where you see the canyon views. That viewpoint is essentially a small hill full of big rocks, and one can climb on the rocks to get various vantage points to see the canyon. Depending on one’s fitness level and enthusiasm, one can climb to various heights to get a good view. With a camera in my hand, I walked up and down the big rocks multiple times to get good views and angles of the canyon. It became a good workout session for me that day, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Views of the canyon:
Last rays of the evening on the tip of the rocks:
I wanted to see the views of the canyon at dusk, and there was still some time for that. So I climbed down from those rocks and started exploring other parts of the fort in the meantime. The sunset would be in the other direction (the above view is the eastern view), and I thought I should check out the sunset on the western side of the fort.
While walking around, a large ancient temple in the middle of the fort looked amazing with the sun setting behind it. There was a group of tourists on top of that temple, and that setting formed a nice subject for some silhouette photography experiments.
Silhouettes of the crowd watching the sunset behind the temple:
The sun setting behind the temple and a distant hill:
Taking a cue from those tourists, I found a way to climb to the top of that viewpoint and found magnificent views on the other side from there.
Sunset on the west side of the fort:
I came back to the canyon view point right at the time when the sun went down the horizon, to check out the twilight glow there, and I was not disappointed by those views.
The canyon at dusk:
The twilight time just after sunset was magical. The sky was lit up beautifully in blue and orange shades, and the ancient structures in the fort looked great against the backdrop of that sky.
The mosque in the colourful twilight:
A beautiful structure called “Charminar in Gandikota Fort”, under that lovely evening sky:
A beautiful temple in the fort looked amazing under the evening sky:
After all the sunset and twilight hour wandering around, it was time to go back to the hotel. Dusty was parked in an open parking lot which was essentially just a vast open grassland. When I reached the parking spot at the end of the day, with that evening glow still lingering around in the sky, and headlights of other cars around giving a nice lighting effect, it gave me an idea to click the below photograph there.
Time to pack up and call it a day:
My hotel was about 15km away from the fort, and the night drive to the hotel after that sunset session was very peaceful and serene. The road from Gandikota to that hotel is very nice. It is a nice two-lane road with good lane markings and reflectors, across the vast open desert lands and hills, with zero development on either side. At night, it was pitch dark all around, zero light pollution, the sky was clear and lit up with a thousand stars, the reflectors in the lane markings looked fantastic under the headlights, and with zero traffic all around, it was a fantastic drive back! Most of the tourists on the fort stayed in one of those lodges or tents on the fort, and there was hardly anyone driving in and out of the fort at that time.
The next morning, I started from the hotel at about 5:45am, and again had that beautiful drive back to the fort, still under pitch dark conditions, and with those reflectors looking lovely under the headlights. Absolutely loved those peaceful and quiet night drives across the desert lands, to and from my hotel to the fort.
I parked the car and walked straight to the canyon view point for sunrise. It was still a good 20 minutes before sunrise when I was walking to that point. I love this morning walks to see the sunrise. The anticipation of seeing the sunrise is as exciting as the sunrise itself. I walked briskly, climbed the rocks, found a good spot with clear views, and waited in anticipation to see the sun rising from straight behind the canyons. And in the next few minutes, I saw an absolutely breathtaking sunrise there which was the highlight of my trip.
Sunrise above the canyon:
The magic of the morning light:
Another view of the beautifully backlit rocks:
After seeing the sunrise I walked back to my car and drove to another point nearby for another view.
While walking back, saw that ancient temple on the fort now bathing in the morning light:
Dusty on the fort:
Morning views of the canyon and the water from another point:
Finally, a parting shot of Dusty on that vast and open land surrounding the fort and the canyon:
The return drive to Bangalore was a brisk and uneventful drive. Overall it was a memorable short trip. The fort was beautiful, and the views from the fort, especially the sunrise views were absolutely breathtaking. I will surely remember that sunrise for a long long time.
Well, that is all from this simple and short weekend drive. Thank you very much for reading!
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