Trek to Mysterious Island

After I uploaded mysterious island trek pics on Facebook, many of my friends are curious to know about this place and they were really surprised to know that such a place exist in Andhra Pradesh. I read about this mysterious island somewhere on the net and really waited for my chance to go there. Finally with the help of Hyderabad Trekking club and Soorya prakash, i got a chance to visit this beautiful mysterious island.

Location & History:
Yelleswaragutta - mysterious island is located on Krishna river, upstream to Nagarjuna sagar. It is situated very near to famous Nagarjunakonda. There is no fixed transport facility to reach this island. This island is actually a hill and there is one Siva temple on the top of the hill. The temple will be opened once in a year and during that period at-least 5000 people visit that temple.

How to reach there?
There are two ways to reach Mysterious island.

• Difficult way - First we have to reach Devarakonda(110km) from Hyderabad, Then we have to catch a bus to pogilla and we have to get down at Kambalapalli (70km). From there we have to trek for atleast 2 hrs to reach krishna river. From there we have to hire a boat to reach Yelleswaragutta.
• Easy Way - Reach Macherla from Hyderabad. Then reach anupu, from there you have to hire a boat to reach Yelleswaragutta.
• In both the cases, after reaching yelleswaragutta, one has to climb at-least 300 steps to reach the temple situated on the top of the hill.

Why Mysterious??
It is considered as mysterious because the temple which is situated on the top of the hill is opened only for one week during Sivarathri. During that time boat facility will be there from anupu for the convenience of the locals who visit the temple. Apart from that one week, island will be completely isolated and no one except some fisherman visit this island during rest of the year. One can reach this island only in summer, because of the less availability of water in Krishna river and also as it is best time for fishing, one can get some source of transport to reach that island. Except river water, you wont find anything to eat there.

Difficulty??

As the best time to reach this island is in summer, it will be a bit difficult to trek under the sun. We have to climb down a big hill and also climb the hill at mysterious island under the hot sun, to reach the top of the hill. Also we have to walk for at-least 2 hrs on the plain surface. Apart from the trek we have to travel for at-least 5 hrs to reach our starting point of our trek. Considering all these, I will rate this trek as a moderate for experienced trekkers and moderate+ for the first timers.

Our Trek:

We started at around 5 AM from Hyderabad by APSRTC Express bus and reached Devarakonda at around 8AM. There are plenty of buses from Hyderabad to devarakonda, starting from 3AM, for every 30mins there is a bus to devarakonda. We had breakfast at a small hotel which is situated opposite to bus stand and much to our surprise, the breakfast was so delightful. After having our breakfast, we waited for about 1hr to board bus that goes to Kambalapalli (Last stop: Pogilla , we have to get down at Kambalapalli to reach mysterious island). There is only one bus that runs three time a day between Devarakonda and kambalapalli. There is one bus at around 9Am from devarakonda and we planned to catch that bus. If we miss that bus at 9, then we have to wait till 1PM, for the next bus. We board the bus at around 9.30 AM and reached kambalapalli at around 11.30 AM. The roads between devarakonda and kambalapalli is not so good and we have to travel in an ordinary bus.

After reaching kambanapalli, we went towards the over head tank which is situated on the left side of the bus stop and from there we have to climb a small hill. Initially we thought that after climbing the small hill and walking for some distance, we can reach the river bank. But we walked for almost 1hr on the plain surface and then we saw beautiful view of the island. Then comes the difficult part of the trek. We started climbing down the hill at around 1PM and it became very difficult for us to climb down under the hot sun. Even after climbing down the hill, we have to walk for at-least 15 mins to reach the river bank. After reaching the river bank, we had our lunch and slept for 2hrs. We should thank the boat driver and his family for guiding us and also for helping in getting water from the river.

At around 4PM, we started from our resting area to the island by boat. It took around 30mins to reach the island and at around 5 PM we again started climbing the hill present in the island. On the way to the island, one can have beautiful views of krishna river and island. On the way to island, I had a good conversation with the boat driver and got to know about many things about the mysterious island and also about the surrounding area.

Initially we thought that the trek to the hill present in the island will be easy as there are steps and top of the hill is easily visible. But the steps are very steep and distance between every two steps is high, makes it difficult to climb. Almost every one in our group got tired and find it very difficult to climb the hill. Some how we managed to find the camping place before the sun set and luckily everyone reached there with out before it became so dark.

After pitching the tent, we started finding the fire wood and all the necessary items for cooking the dinner. I should thank hemanth, krishna sir, soorya for preparing the delicious dinner. After dinner, I didn't slept till 1Am as I took the watchmen duty. That was my first time sleeping on the top of the hill, watching beautiful sky with full of stars.

As we reached the our camping area late in the evening, we didn't have much time to explore the place around our camping area. The views of Krishna river and hills around the island was so amazing. At around 7Am, we started climbing down the hill. As the steps are situated in east, climbing down became difficult for us at 7 AM because of the sun.

As the river was so deep, we didn't went much inside the river for taking bath. While everyone was busy with bathing and relaxing, hemanth prepared breakfast for all of us. After we had breakfast and packed every thing, we left the island at around 10AM. Instead of opting for the same route which we traveled yesterday, we went towards anupu.

We reached anupu at around 11Am, and hired an auto reach macherla which is situated at a distace of 15 kms. After having lunch at macherla, we started to at around 2PM to hyderabad by qualis and reached Hyderabad at around 5PM.

Anupu:

Anupu is situated at a distance of 10 km from nagarjuna sagar, has some historic significance. Anupu is a site of Buddhist excavations reconstructed to perfection with extreme care and great effort. During the construction of the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam, the ruins of an ancient Buddhist university were excavated along with several monasteries. These ruins are collected and few structures are reconstructed at Anupu. One should visit the beautiful amphi theatre present at anupu.

My trek mates:

Thats from me about Mysterious island........Happy Traveling.....