Saleshwaram - Awesome and complex Trek

Saleshwarm which is a Shiva Temple (also Called as Lingamaiah ) located in “Tiger Reserve Nallamala Forest” nearly 30 KM from Mannanur, 50 KM from Srisailam.The temple is located in the deep forest of the nallamala forest region and it is opened for 3-5 days in the whole year. The temple is closed and no one can reach the temple during other days of the year as these exits in tiger reserve.

The temple will be opened 5 days during March-April period. Visiting the temple in moon light on chaitra pournima (The full moon day of Chaitra (March-April)) is auspicious. Mostly the temple is opened during the chaitra pournima time every year which came on April 15 ,2014 this year. Our journey started with 5 people ( all my colleagues ) on April 15-2014 from  hyderbad.our plan was to visit temple before 12 mid-night on April 15. APSRTC arranges special buses to Saleshwarm during the 5 days of this period.

We started from Hyderabad main bus station to kalvakurthi which took 2 hours. Special buses are available from Kalvakurthi to Saileshwaram which took around 2 hours. Normally buses reach to a point where people start their journey to Shiva temple but our bus was stopped 4km before this point as there was a huge traffic blocked. The bus could not move forward and we had to take a walk from there. There was a heavy rain before that day which caused us not even able to walk.

We walked through the tough roads for 4km to the starting point. We started at around 7:30 PM and reached the starting point at around 9:30PM. Food is cooked and served for free to all the people who come to visit the temple. We started for the temple after eating our food at around 10PM.  There is a lot of moon light available but only during some parts of the road so it is advisable to take a torch with you. The first hurdle was to get down of a Hill which has many huge stones. There will be lot of people walking helping each other throughout the way. The journey will be to get down a hill first , then move up to another hill , get down the same hill . The last part which is to get down of a hill is very complex as it contains many huge stones and it is very slippery with a valley on the other side. The total journey was around 8km (to and fro from temple). We had an extra 4km walk which made that a total of 12km.

The walk was very difficult as it was dark and the road has lots of stones. When you reach the temple we can see a large hill which is looks like it was struck with something and divided into 2 parts. On one part we can see a water fall where people usually take bath and go for Shiva Darshanam and other part has the small temple where we can see the Shiva Lingam. The water fall is said to contain water only on these 3 days. The other important thing if you visit during the chaitra pournima day the moon rays fall directly on the Shiva Lingam at around midnight. The ticket price was 20/- for each person. The return journey was very hard and once we are back we took special bus to Achamapet where we got direct bus to Hyderabad .We reached Hyderabad by 9AM next day.

Water Fall       

Shiva Lingam also called as Lingamaiah 

Will Meet you with another experience.