[Driver 33]

It was a three-day camping trip with my friends. We were six people and took two cars featuring Thar and Octavia in this travelogue.

Day 1: North Hyderabad to Maredumilli

We started at 6. The plan was to pick up other friends at Vijayawada and then head to the top of Maredumilli. Our first stop was at Seven Foodcourt at 7:30 on NH65 for breakfast.
We took the National highway route to Maredumilli, and on the way, we had to pick up two other friends from Vijayawada.

I was tailgating the Thar. The roads in Vijayawada city seemed new, all blacked out, but there was an unexpected 2 feet pothole in which one of Thar's tyres fell at a higher speed. I just escaped that pothole in the Octavia by a tiny margin. A loud noise started coming from the rear left of the Thar. We suspected that it was the suspension or the rear axle, and then we went to the Mahindra showroom and informed them that it was a bit urgent. They were happy to prioritise us first and took the car for a test drive in the street. When the technician was driving slowly, my friend Dhanesh popped his head out of the passenger seat and looked at the rear tyre. He then suspected that the rear tyre might have gone loose. The technician got the wrench to check if the tyre was loose. The wheel nut was turning right with a single finger on the twist. Two wheel nuts have got loosened. After another test drive, when checked, the issue got resolved.

We lost 1 hour in this process, starting from Vijayawada to Rajahmundry at noon. We had lunch at Sri Kanya Comfort in Rajamundry. The food was yummy over there. We started from Rajahmundry to Maredumilli at 16:00. Dhanesh and Tarun kept munching Pringles and Oreo's the whole time. Dhanesh bought a massive Metro cover with ten Maggi packets, ten packets of Oreo and around seven boxes of Pringles and loads of Haldirams snacks.

A photo of Octavia


The passengers kept switching from two cars because it was hard to sit in Thar for a long time due to its constant waviness and hard seats. I learned there was a 23km off-road patch to go to Maredumilli's top, which is challenging for sedans to reach.

My strategy was to transfer all the heavy luggage into Thar along with two passengers at the back so that I could get extra ground clearance. I decided that Tarun and I would come in Octavia as we were the lighter people in the group. Tarun had experience driving on these broken rocky roads, which he learnt driving Rexton and a few other cars when he resided in the Himalayas for a quarter of a year. I didn't want to put more diesel cause, after all, we were climbing uphill, and weight reduction offers more ease to climbing uphill in a front-wheel drive. We had only around 7 litres of diesel left when we reached the Maredumilli base.

We reached Maredumilli's base around 19:00. There were rooms for a 2-hour lease. We freshened up over there and emptied our bowels, as there were no washrooms on the hill. Bamboo Chicken from Sneha restaurant is famous in Maredumilli.

A photo of Thar


We took tents and food at the base and started our challenging journey to reach Maredumilli top at 20:00. Tarun said he was tired, and I told him to sleep until the hard part came up. After 20 minutes, he was back up again, helping me get the car on the flat side of the road by checking the surroundings from the sunroof. He was shooting videos from the sunroof and guiding me to take which side of the road to avoid scraping my liftback's underbody. We mainly drove it in manual mode and switched off ASC sometimes.

The road towards to the top of the hill clips here

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E1J...ew?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rJT...ew?usp=sharing

Dhanesh and his cousin Naveen were sharing Thar's wheel and waiting for us after crossing each obstacle which was easy peasy in that car. Our liftback struggled but climbed the hills with ease on the accelerator and with constant momentum. We removed the bags and drove only on 7 litres of diesel, which helped us to climb more easily. It was challenging for Tarun and me in Octavia, but it was a thrilling experience taking our liftback safely uphill. We shared the wheel throughout the off-road uphill climb to Maredumilli's top. All the SUV and MUV owners were surprised to see a sedan climbing to the top safely without damaging the car's components. Octavia could climb to the top because of all my friend's help.

We reached the top around 21:45. Once we stepped out of the car, a constant cold breeze was hitting, and when I looked towards the sky, I could see hundreds of stars in clear clarity at the top of the hill. We then clicked photos for some time.



Dhanesh and Tarun were good with the camera. They were clicking the stars by shooting torchlight into the sky and increasing the light exposure time in the camera, and I was helping my other friends set up the tent and campfire and organise the food.

We had dinner and enjoyed the cold breeze and scenery for some time.
Unexpectedly the tent was tiny. One of our friends slept in the Octavia trunk, we folded the seats in, and he slept comfortably. We had to wake up at 4:00 the next day to see the sunrise. I slept at 0:00.

DAY 2: See sunrise at Maredumilli, get back to base, freshen up and move to Vanjangi

I woke up around 4:30. We hiked to the sunrise point, which was around 800 meters to 1 kilometre away. We were above the clouds and saw the sunrise.


At 7:30, we started to move down the hill. It was all about controlling the car with engine braking in manual mode. When we came down, we went to a waterfall nearby. We drove Thar inside the rolling water, which was fun.


Here’s the clip of downhill

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ew2...ew?usp=sharing

A beautiful shot shot through sunroof by Tarun

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b1d...ew?usp=sharing




We returned to the base around 10:30 and had biriyani, our brunch, at 11:00. We took those 2-hour room lease and did our chores by 13:00. We started to Vanjangi at 13:30, which was around six and a half hours away. There is a ghat route road and a national highway road from Maredumilli to Vanjangi. We took the national highway route. Dhanesh and Tarun were sharing Octavia, and I drove Thar for the first half of the journey. The drive was going well, and we were enjoying it. We stopped at TeaTime. We requested the tea vendor to make Maggi for us, and we had a cup of Maggi. Tarun and Dhanesh shifted to Thar when we stopped for the Tea break. None of us didn't drive for long because we had fewer hours of sleep, so we kept switching the wheel frequently. We were close to Vanjangi around 20:00, and the famous Vanjangi twisties began.

Tarun and Dhanesh shifted into Octavia when we were one and a half hours away from Vanjangi, and they both were barely awake.
Dhanesh fell asleep in the passenger seat, and Tarun slept for a while. I was enjoying my drive on the ghats and was listening to Innerspeaker by Tame Impala for some time. Both woke up, and it was super dark at the ghats. We were speaking about phantoms and stuff for the thrill. I got a tyre pressure loss notification when I was on the ghats. I filled the air before starting to Vanjangi, and it popped up again. It ensured that my rear left had a slow leak puncture which notified me again in less than 8 hours, and we had the puncture kit and air compressor for safety. I could feel the car driving towards left, but we were near my destination, and I couldn't stop at the ghats, so I managed to finish off like that.

We reached our destination, Backpackers Base Camp at Paderu, Vanjangi, at 21:30. We had dinner soon and fell asleep as we were super tired that day, and we had to wake up the next morning at 3:30 for the sunrise trek. The trek is around 3 kilometres away.

Readymade camp’s at Vanjangi

DAY 3: Trek to the top point of Vanjangi, freshen up and stay at Rajahmundry

It was a cold morning, around 12 to 13 degrees Celsius. Woke up around 3:45 and started the car at 4. Trek base was about 3 minutes away. We took both cars, and Octavia was parked at the bottom. High-ground clearance cars could travel uphill, so we went in Thar and parked there. 4 of us went in the car, and 2 people came by, trekking upwards. I was so tired that I barely had a 5% battery, but I pushed myself in that trek.

There were 65 to 70-degree climbs. Dhanesh struggled to breathe as we walked through the clouds, but we made it there in 45 minutes. He drank 3 glucose tetra pack bottles. As we walked through the clouds, a sudden headache started as I forgot to cover my ears with a cap.

The cold breeze was constantly striking, my hands got super hard, and I couldn't even use my phone. We saw the clouds much more clearly and the sunrise. We clicked photos for some time, and then Dhanesh, Tarun and I trekked down. Naveen, Manoj and Kishore spent some time at the top of the hill and came down later. Meanwhile, we had some chicken tikka as a morning snack when we came to the base.


Mahindra Commander owner was checking out Thar, who was surprised to see the big engine. Tarun dropped us fully down, and when we went to Octavia, it had a puncture. We had the necessary tools to repair it, and we did it with the help of a few locals. We fixed the puncture using the puncture strip and went back to camp. We freshened up and had Maggi for breakfast.

Locals checking out the new Thar




Octavia’s puncture


Dhanesh, Tarun and I wanted to go to Rajamundry, and 3 other friends wanted to go to a temple on the way. We started on our way to Rajamundry, Tarun was on the wheel, and I slept meanwhile cause I was so tired. He covered the state highways, and we switched the wheel when we got on the national highway. Then we decided to head back home because we had nothing to explore and had good energy to drive back home. We notified our other friends. They were up for it as well. We stopped at Habitat at 14:00 for lunch at Rajahmundry and spent around 3 hours waiting for them to arrive. Meanwhile, Dhanesh, Tarun and I were having some fun, spicy conversations, sipping a lot of coffee.

We got the notification that our other friends were nearing us, and then we started from Habitat towards Vijayawada. We resumed our journey around 17:00 and reached Vijayawada around 20:30. We dropped off our friends and then went home.

On the way, we had dinner at a dhaba 40km after crossing the Andhra Pradesh - Telangana border.

DAY 4: Going home

At 00:00, we crossed Suryapet. As we were nearing ORR, a big accident occurred between two commercial trucks on NH 65. A traffic jam of 10 kilometres. We were supposed to reach home at 2:00 but arrived at 3:00. 1 hour of heavy traffic at midnight.

Tarun fell asleep, and Naveen and Dhanesh were in Thar. We three were communicating on the phone about the traffic condition, and they were updating me on which sides lanes to take to move faster as Naveen got down the car and walked ahead to check out the traffic condition. It was hectic for our tired minds, but we managed safely to get back home.

Once we reached our common point, we dispersed and arrived home safely. Our 1700 km road trip went safe and sound.

[DCharger]

Fantastic writeup and beautiful locations.

I drive Hyderabad - Rajahmundry(my Native) almost every month, in fact did it 15 times in 2022.

Maredumilli hilltop you mentioned is actually "Gudisa". This place was pristine when we went there in 2020. We collected garbage in bags carried it back to base and didn't leave any trace of our visit on the hilltop except for the campfire.

Post Pushpa movie shoot on the hilltop, the place has seen an exponential increase in visitors and garbage strewn all over. Locals sometimes, I heard don't allow visitors as the constant vehicular traffic disturbs the peaceful environment of the tribal villages around. I wish and hope the local authorities come up with some strategy to manage this influx.