Joined: May 20, 2008 Posts: 1261 Location: City of NAWABS- Hyderabad
Status: Offline
Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 2:43 am Post subject: Belum Caves- AP
This write up has been pending for a week. The trip was done on last saturday. We had planned a trip to Belum caves a long time back but could not execute it as one guy or the other was busy. Finally last sunday we managed to do the trip. The people for the trip are Stephen(non IAHian), aditya and yours truly . Stephen buzzed me on sunday morning at around 5 askin me if i was ready for the trip, i was like WTF( i had slept at 3am), the trip is tomorrow (i.e) sunday, then stephen reminded me that the trip was actually scheduled for sat as he had work on sunday. I immediately called up Aditya and he responded that the tri is today and he is leaving his place. I asked adi to pick me up and so he did and we were off to stephens place where he was waiting for us with all the gear etc.. We were scheduled to start at 5 but due to late wake up's etc etc we finally started at 6:30 took the bangalore Highway and were off. I was too sleepy to be awake and dozed off, stephen and adi were having a talk. Then we stopped for tea/coffee etc at around 8am. An hour later we came across a fort which is surrounded by the krishna river on all the sides. We had no plans of collecting here but when i insisted stephen and aditya agreed and we turned our vehicle and found a way to get to the river. On our way stephen was telling us that the forst is inhabited by 15' pythons(this is to be handled by the FOSC,( friends of snake society) the snakes are to be captured and release in the wild where they dont harm people and vice versa. The snake capture will be another part. Enough talkin now here are some pics
the fort, the place is called as pitabar i guess,
the view of the fort from the bridge
we drove down to the river and put our nets in the water,we could see a lot of daniconius, puntius conchoius, some carp kinda fish(putting my bet on labeo rohita), lapedocephalus thermalis,. The water was just ankle deep as this part had been cut off from the main river due to the dry up. The water became murky as we set our foot in.
the water body where we collected and the bridge.
collecting a few loaches(yet to be ided) and some shrimps we headed back to the car and started on our way to the caves.
We then reached kurnool and asked for directions to reach nandayal road(the caves are on this road and people didnt know much about the caves as they appeared blank when mentioned). from kurnoo the caves are another 100kms or so but the road is single track and bumpy. On the way we stopped at the rocky gardens where stephen had arranged for break fast. These are natural formations of rock which have been taken over by the APTDC(andhra pradesh tourism) and converted into a tourist spot.
after breakfast which was more like brunch we started to reach our destination which took another 3hrs.
On the way we encountered a water body an decided to collect their as well on our way back.
Atlast we reach the caves, where we were greeted my Mr.Shekar, he manages the staff at the cave(this is also a APTDC) tourist resort.
the steps that lead down to the caves.
The caves are about 150feet under ground and are humid. The temperature inside the caves is about 33C due to which no snakes stay there. The only live things we could find other than the tourists were a type of moth, bats and the fishes ofcourse,
these are the boards that greets us as we enter the caves,
me too tired to type now, enjoy the pics of the caves, will do the remaining write up tomorrow
for guys who are wondering who stephen is, this is the guy 4the texture of the rocks inside the cave was quiet tempting as the rocks would be masterpieces in a planted tank especially the iwagumi set up,
this is an aritficial fountain
this is exactly how the placed looked like as this pic was captured w/o a flash
Joined: May 20, 2008 Posts: 1261 Location: City of NAWABS- Hyderabad
Status: Offline
Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 2:44 pm Post subject: Re: Belum Caves- AP
well for the remainder, here we go,
Forgot to mention a couple of things regarding the caves,
1) the caves have water in them which supposedly comes from a perrenial water system within the caves themselves.
2)the caves arent connected to any water body, which made the trip all the more interesting,
3)the caves are about 3kms in total of which only 1.5kms is ope to the public
we had been in the caves for just like 5-10 minutes and were sweating like hell, a wierd fact was that our sweat tasted bitter, when i asked the guide who was accompanying us he told that it is because of the caves which are built of limestone. Another 10 minutes or so later our bodies had acclimatized to the cave temperature and the sweating had stopped.
there were arrow marks in red (as above) on the walls to guide people In and Out of the caves,
the caves were floored to a particular extent,
the stalactite formations,
the pit holes in the ceilings
atlast we reached the water body and set foot where no man had ever done before(atleast thats what the guide told us )
L-R, me, aditya and stephen searching for fishes using our torches, head lamps, etc..
this is exactly how it looked inside the cave where we collected the fish, the rod in the pic is a fish net with a large handle,
coming out with the catch,
Joined: May 20, 2008 Posts: 1261 Location: City of NAWABS- Hyderabad
Status: Offline
Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 3:26 pm Post subject: Re: Belum Caves- AP
pics of the fish that we caught, the loach pics are yet to be posted, we caught a species of lapedocephalus, garra and a neocardinia shrimp,
got only the pics of the garra as of now
garra mullaya??
after collecting from the caves we came out, it wa around 4, we had our lunch and then headed back to the water body where we had planned to collect earlier as it was on our way,
this stream overflows the reservoir, we spotted a lot of fishy life here,
stephen and aditya cast the net and i shooed the fish from the other side,
checking for the fishes that came in our net,
devario aequipinnatus, these were over 5" and would beat the australian rainbow fishes any day by their colours,
puntius tic to
E.maculatus breeding pair with fry
garra mullaya
rasbora daniconius(this is the first place where i saw a very less population of these fish)
then we packed and started to get back home, it was at 11:45pm that we reached home,
the total drive was of 710kms AFAIR,
weekend well spent
photo courtesy most of em by Adi, couple of em by me
Last edited by Mohammed Mudassir on Sun May 22, 2011 5:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
All times are UTC + 5.5 Hours Goto page 1, 2, 3Next
Page 1 of 3
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
Guest(s): 464
. Stephen buzzed me on sunday morning at around 5 askin me if i was ready for the trip, i was like WTF( i had slept at 3am), the trip is tomorrow (i.e) sunday, then stephen reminded me that the trip was actually scheduled for sat as he had work on sunday. I immediately called up Aditya and he responded that the tri is today and he is leaving his place. I asked adi to pick me up and so he did and we were off to stephens place where he was waiting for us with all the gear etc.. We were scheduled to start at 5 but due to late wake up's etc etc we finally started at 6:30 took the bangalore Highway and were off. I was too sleepy to be awake and dozed off, stephen and adi were having a talk. Then we stopped for tea/coffee etc at around 8am. An hour later we came across a fort which is surrounded by the krishna river on all the sides. We had no plans of collecting here but when i insisted stephen and aditya agreed and we turned our vehicle and found a way to get to the river. On our way stephen was telling us that the forst is inhabited by 15' pythons(this is to be handled by the FOSC,( friends of snake society) the snakes are to be captured and release in the wild where they dont harm people and vice versa. The snake capture will be another part. Enough talkin now here are some pics 
4the texture of the rocks inside the cave was quiet tempting as the rocks would be masterpieces in a planted tank especially the iwagumi set up,
h,
)
![[News Feed]](images/powered/feed_20_news.png "News Feed"){kind=small}
![[Forums Feed]](images/powered/feed_20_forums.png "Forums Feed"){kind=small}
![[Downloads Feed]](images/powered/feed_20_down.png "Downloads Feed"){kind=small}
![[Web Links Feed]](images/powered/feed_20_links.png "Web Links Feed"){kind=small}
![[Validate robots.txt]](images/powered/valid-robots.png "Validate robots.txt"){kind=small}