13-Mar-2004 -- Our Expedition to the Discovery of 16N 78E

Date: Saturday, March 13, 2004 at 1730hours
Visit by: Praveen Goggi and Chandra Dasaka
Place: At Itikalapadu Village, Manapadu Mandal, Alampur Taluq, Mahaboobnagar District, Andhrapradesh State, India
Visit for more info: http://www.hindubooks.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=99
Distance: 2.5 Kms from Itikalapadu Village.
Earlier Visits: Please click on the respective names to view earlier visits.
Expedition dedicated to: Guenter Walser, Austria.

Having completed the discovery of 16°N 77°E near Manvi, Raichur in Karnataka state, Chandra and myself were on our way to next DCP of the day, which showed 110 Kms from earlier point. As we were driving on the mainroad, I noticed a smaller road to our right, which led to a holy place “Mantralyam”. We decided to visit this holy place too before we went on to next confluence point. Mantralayam (means House of “Mantras”) is well-known Hindu worship place and has been a house to a Godly saint, namely Shri Guru Raghavendra Swami.

Driving 40 Kms through this small road, we were very soon at the temple of Mantralayam. We spent about 40 minutes at the temple and its surround. Having completed all the temple rituals, we were back on the road towards our second destination of the day! This final lap of the trip was the longest as we had to take smaller roads to reach the national highway 7. At the highway junction GPS showed 4+ kms towards southwest.

After driving about 1 Km on the highway, we came to a T-junction, where we took a small road to the village. Less than a Km on this road, we reached a village, but nowhere near our DCP, it was still 3.46 Kms. Chandra spoke to villagers and tried to get directions to reach nearest to the point. Both of us were optimistic to get very close to the point, as we drove back to the highway and took the next turn in to a different village “Itikalapadu”. The nearest we could reach from this village was 2.5 Kms from the point.

Villagers confirmed that there was no road beyond and looked like our point would be in middle of marshy and wet fields. Me and Chandra were determined to complete the point and decided to walk all the way thru the fields. It was a tough walk, believe me before we reached the destination. It was evening and we were afraid of sunset before we could reach the point, but we made it well in time!

Walking back was fun and speaking with villagers was lovely. We attracted some intelligent crowd and educated them about our project. We took some snaps at the village, before we bid goodbye to the village. It was 10pm before we reached our houses.

Contact Info:
Praveen Goggi, +91-98851-98951 or +91-20-2295-3090
Chandra Dasaka, +91-40-3090-2105