Weekend getaway to Araku Valley

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Hi Folks! I will talk about our 3 day trip to Araku Valley, situated around 120kms from Visakhapatnam, the port city of Andhra Pradesh. We started from Hyderabad, and we went on this trip in July,2016. All costs mentioned below are in Indian Rupees(INR), for 2 pax

 Suggested Itinerary:
Day 1: Tribal Museum, Coffee Museum, Local Shopping
Day 2: Borra Caves, Cheparai Falls, Padmapuram Gardens

Cost of Trip:
Train Tickets To & Fro, from Hyderabad: 3100Rs
Hotel: 2500Rs
Food & Sight-Seeing: 3300Rs
Total: 9000Rs

Trip in Detail:

We took the Garib Rath express, an overnight train, from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam. The train reached Visakhapatnam at around 8am, the next morning.

There are two ways of getting around:

1. Book the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Department package, enjoy their day long package and a drop back to Visakhapatnam in the evening (Excellent for a one day trip)

2. Go to Araku Valley on own means (Private Vehicle/ Taxi/ Bus services) and enjoy longer stay

We chose the 2nd option. An area of improvement for AP Tourism would be to provide Volvo options for tourists from Visakhapatnam. There was no such option and Redbus was also not helpful. We had to resort to RTC buses to reach Araku. The only saving grace was the duration was around 3.5hrs. We endured it as a one time experience!

On reaching Araku Valley, we had lunch and checked into a pre-booked hotel  at around 3PM. We freshened up and started exploring the valley!

At the entrance of the Araku Valley

 We headed first to the Tribal Musuem. It was a very unique experience and had lots of props to help tourists get beautiful photos clicked! Became a huge fan of the Tribal museum!!
The entrance of the Tribal Museum



Inside the Tribal Home!!

Next we headed to the Coffee Museum. At the cost of sounding repetitive, I dare say that this too was a very unique experience! The place had a strong coffee aroma, and tourists could take a guided tour of the entire coffee making process. It was one of its kind and left me enthralled, to say the least.

Coffee Museum - Knowledge is Caffeine!!

The guided tour of the Coffee Making Process
We then had some quick dinner and called it a night. Next day, we had planned to go to Borra Caves. We took a bus till around 6kms from the caves and took an auto-rickshaw from there. Borra Caves is the highlight of our entire trip. These are caves of natural formation, formed over 150 million years ago! Let the pictures speak!

At the entrance of Borra Caves

Descending into the huge caves!

Light Play

Feeling the wet caves!

Sandwiched!!

We came back to Araku Valley by around lunch time, and went out to visit Chaparai Falls. The best part of these falls were their horizontal nature!

The Horizontal Chaparai falls in the backdrop!



Finally we wrapped up the trip with a visit to Padmapuram Gardens - beautiful place to hang out and walk amidst the lush greenery, hand in hand with your soulmate!

Nature Walk @Padmapuram Gardens

Amidst Flora & some Fauna!!
One notable delicacy to try out in Araku valley is the Bamboo Chicken. Do try it out. It is organically prepared in a bamboo shoot, without oil or water. Don't have pictures to post, but can vouch for the taste!

We headed back to Visakhapatnam the next day and took the evening train back to Hyderabad! That was about the short sojourn to Araku.


Location: Araku, Andhra Pradesh, India

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