Uppalapadu Bird Sanctuary and Nandivelugu Temple

 We have travelled to our native after almost a year, this time we choose to drive our car. That has been one freaky adventure. But it went super smooth wih 13.5hours of non-stop drive with couple of short breaks for breakfast and lunch. After travelling to the native it's been a while since we visit any places around, as most of the time was visiting the friends and relatives. Finally after a month of moving to our native, we have decided to explore a place that is very near by and we choose uppalapadu Bird Sanctuary and Nandivelugu temple near by. We have planned for an half a day trip as all these places are pretty near by. There are 4 temples near by that form a shape of a bow and we should visit all the 4 temples in a single day it seems.

We wokeup early and got ready by 9AM, as we need to finish of some puja and other rituals before 11AM and we started from home by 9:30 and reached the Nandivelugu temple by 10AM and it took almost an hour to finish our puja and other formalities there. The temple is pretty old and is one for Shaiva centres where Agastya Mahamuni (sage) visited and constructed a temple.

Later, the Chalukya dynasty came to power and King Vishnuvardhana renovated the temple. He put diamonds in the belly of Vinayaka idol and in the horns of Nandi idol. The light of Vinayaka idol falls on the horns of the Nandi and further the spectacular lighting falls on the feet of Shiva during Nityarchana (daily worship). But later, thieves robbed the diamonds by damaging Vinayaka and Nandi idols. Thus, the name Nandivelugu (light of the bull) was given to the village in the ancient times.

The Nandisagar pond with the statue of Nandi situated in the middle of the pond is the main attraction beside the main road, but it is failing to attract the public, mainly tourists due to lack of basic amenities. We have some relatives near by and after visiting them we started heading towards the Bird sanctuary and we reached there by 12:30PM.

We parked our car and entered the sanctuary. The parking charge for car is Rs.20 and entrance ticket is Rs.10 per person. The place is bit crowded may be due to Sunday.

The place is very small. Just a small pond with a walking track around it and there were some benches for the people to sit and a view point to have a good sight of birds. There is also some small palying equipments for kids to play and small eatery where you can get some snacks, drinks and ice-creams. The Uppalapadu Bird Sanctuary is located in Uppalapadu, near Guntur City, India. Painted storks, spot-billed pelicans and other birds that migrate from various countries such as Siberia and Australia use the village water tanks for nesting. But as this is non-season(We went by End of January) we could see only 2-3 types of pelicans. Heard that November is the right season to visit the place.

But the view point doesn't look much useful to me as the near by trees are covering the most of the part and rest of the view point is covered by selfie enthusiasts, who will not let us either have a sight of the birds nor allow us to stand there. So I decided to walk around the walking track and take pictures that was a wiser decision and I could take some good pictures.

I am trying to add most of the pictures here. There is nothing much to visit there, so we have spent an hour there and returned to home.

Here are the types of birds based on the season that you can find in this bird sanctuary. You may have a look and plan your trip at appropriate time so that you can have a chance of witness wide range of pelicans.

It's a pretty short trip, but we had good funtime to visit the place with relatives and cousins. It's worth visiting once. You might have already got bored of seeing same pelicans so let me add few other kind of birds.