HamsalaDeevi (Machilipatnam)

Hamsaladeevi:

The perfect beach at Hamsaladeevi

This place has a lovely Krishna temple said to have been built by swans or by Devatas, in the Dwapara Yuga when the river Krishna flowed by the place.
Nowadays Krishna joins the Bay of Bengal a little way off. Road journey at this time was good because of the roads and weather and bad because of the Sugarcane carts carrying the harvest in time for Makara Sankranthi.

The beach is awesome, with hardly anyone now, but at  Magha pournami they expect 1000s of people to camp overnight at the beach and sea bathe early in the morning.

Movva

Another lovely Dwapara Yuga Krishna temple is at Movva and is called the Muvva Venugopal temple. The great poet Kshetrayya composed many Telugu padas here about Krishna. At one time, the Krishna river flowed bythis temple too.

The original sand/sandstone swayambhu vigraham is now painted black and a new sculpture is used in the main temple so that the original will not be spoiled by abhishekam etc.

Mopidevi: Need Children? Pray to the Subrahmanyeswara Swami here. You can offer milk and eggs which are sold in the temple premises.

Ghantasala
The place where Sri Krishna Deva Raya began writing Aamukthamaalyada, in Telugu, because “Telugu is best of all languages in the country” is marked by a statue. There is also a museum of archaeological artifacts, dating back to Buddhist times, collected by a private noble citizen. He lugged these off the street where they were completely neglected and not taken care off. I didn’t get to see it because it was a Sunday when I went.

Kalepalli: you have to turn off either at or before Challapalle (my mom was born here). This is The Most scenic village route. The temple was peaceful because we visited just after Sankranthi. The lake is lovely.

Altogether, I love Krishna River and the villages around it. It was fun driving along the canal. And seeing other women washing clothes at regular intervals well into the afternoon. It was not my washday! The roads were full of bullock cart trains laden with sugar cane that kept railiroading us of the narrow roads. Plenty to see. And also the herds of buffaloes and sheep on the roads with no one to mind them and which give a damn about car horns.!

The perfect beach at Hamsaladeevi

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