Hyderabad Weekend Getaway: Hindupur, Puthaparthi and Lepakshi Nandi

This post is about my two days trip to Hindupur, Puthaparthi and Lepakshi Nandi.
Route: Hyderabad – via NH7 – Kurnool – Hindupur (night halt) – Lepakshi Nandi – Puthaparthi – NH7 – Hyderabad.
Places of Interest: Wind Mills, Kumbakaran park and Mosques in Hindupur, Lepakshi Nandi statue, Puthaparthi (prashanti Nilayam).

We started the journey from Hyderabad at around 9:00 AM in the morning. Took Nehru outer ring road from Gachibowli to reach NH7. Had breakfast at Hotel Munawvar at Jedcharla. On the outskirts of Anantapur (at NH7) had lunch at a dhaba. As you approach, Hindupur, you would notice number of wind mills installed on the hills. If you carefully notice, you would find that, there is a ‘kaccha’ route on each hill to reach the wind mills. So, we decided to take these kaccha route (note that, this route is dangerous, unless you have a good driver, don’t attempt this).. reach the hill-tops to observe wind mills.

Kumbakaran park at Hindupur:


Church at Hindupur:
Mosque at Hindupur:
There are several good hotels at Hindupur for accomodation. I forgot the name of the hotel we stayed. It was a two star hotel with decent facilities. There are several vegetarian and non-vegetarian restaurants in Hindupur. As such, you won’t face any difficulty in finding good food.

Next day, we started from Hindupur at about 8:00 AM in the morning and reached Lepakshi Nandhi by 8:30 AM. Lepakshi town is about 17 KM away from Hindupur. The famous Nandi Statue is in the middle of the Lepakshi town. For a moment, you would wonder, whether this is the actual one. Apart from the Nandi Statue, there is a huge temple in Lepakshi. The priest at the temple, showed me the a stone which had foot prints engraved. He mentioned that, these foot prints are of Sita and Ram. Out of curiosity I asked the priest, how come their marks got engraved on the stone.. were they so heavy? The priest smiled and said… ‘no, they stood on that stone.. and later their foot prints were carved on the stone’. I couldn’t resist myself.. I said to priest.. ‘so.. the person who carved the stone.. actually removed the portions of the stone on which Ram and Sita stood.. what I mean is, the stone you have was never touched by Ram and Sita. The portion of the stone they touched.. is removed’. I guess, the priest had never encountered a tourist who posed such a question. The priest had no answer.

Temple at Lepakshi Nandi:




We started our journey towards Puthaparthi at 10:00 AM. Puthaparthi is about 70 KM away from Lepakshi. The journey was smooth and roads are decent. Reached Puthaparthi at around 11:15 AM.

As such, I didn’t have any plans of going inside Pranshiti Nilayam (the palace of Sai Baba). One thing that you would notice in Puthaparthi is the number of people from Nepal. I wonder what they are doing here. Remarkably.. many of these Nepali guys appear to be drug sellers.. as shown in 1970s Indian movies.

At 12:30 PM, we decided to return to Hyderabad. Reached Hyderabad by 7:00 PM.