Medak Fort - short distance visit from Hyderabad

A good fort to visit, few gotchas though

Medak Fort is a short 2 hours drive from most parts of Hyderabad. It is place with long historical importance. A 12th century fort built by Kakatiya Kings, and then taken over by local Muslim rulers. You can get more information about this fort at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medak_Fort

Is this place worth a half day trip for those in Hyderabad? Lets get to the details.

Drive to the fort

Medak Fort is around 100 kms from Hyderabad. This should be the distance from most parts of the city. It takes around 2 hours to cover this distance. Once you cross Outer Ring Road, it is a national highway with 4 lanes for some 30 KMs and then converts into a 2 lanes road. But the entire stretch is very smooth and 80 kmph (speed limit) can be easily maintained. And a large section of the journey is through reserved forests. The drive is very beautiful. You can even do a stopover at the Urban Forest just before Narsapur.

The stretch between Dundigal and Narsapur has special guests - monkeys. For around 10 Kms, there are many many monkeys lined up on either side of the road. Drive slowly and enjoy the ride! This drive will be at next level during monsoon.

Exploring the fort

Medak fort is on a small hillock. You can drive car up the hillock, till the entrance of fort. This drive is on a narrow road and has 3 hair-pin bends. But all can be managed. Park once you reach the entrance gate and take steps to get inside the fort. But do not have any great expectations - this fort lacks proper maintenance (in fact, there is no maintenance). You can start walking up the stairs and explore different parts of the fort.

There are side paths giving access to various sections of the fort gates. Once you are on top of a gate, very nice views of the surrounding areas can be observed.

Since some of the stairs are not uniform, made of rocks and steep, climbing them is not advised for senior citizens. But it is a fun climb for everyone else, include 7+ year olds.

Art work on some parts of the rock walls is pretty good.

There are good similarities between this fort and the one in Bhongir. But I think (I could be wrong though) Medak Fort looks to have been in use for a longer time compared to Bhongir. Hence Medak Fort has more parts to see and correlate to the recent times. Again, I could be wrong with this assessment.

But the fort is a very good place to walk, explore, take pictures and simply take rest at various points.

Where to eat

From Hyderabad ORR to Medak, there are some small hotels at regular intervals. But there are not any family hotels with clean toilets. We did stop at a Red Fort Hotel just after Narsapur. An ok kind of place to have dosa/idli type stuff. But all through the way, soft drinks, chips, water, fuel stations etc are easily available.

To our total surprise, we found a Harita Hotel (Telangana Tourism) inside the Medak Fort. Apparently rooms can be booked there. I believe it is a decent place for 1 night stay. For day visitors, this hotel has a functional kitchen with decent seating. You can get all kinds of north and south Indian things here. We did not try the toilets here, but the place looks clean in general.

No so good things

Well, there are few things you should be aware of.

• Once you reach Medak, there is a 0.5 Km narrow road that take to base of the hillock. And then there is a 0.5 Km climb uphill. That narrow road, is indeed very very narrow. Reminded me of Ram Gopal Varma’s chase sequences movies. Only one car can fit into these lanes. We went on a festival holiday so there was no traffic. I am not sure what the situation will be on a normal weekend.

  

• From base of the hillock, there is a 0.5 Km climb uphill to the starting gate of fort. At this gate, there is no designated parking. About 6 cars can somehow squeeze in that space. If you are unlucky, then you will have to go back to the base, leave your car there and then walk back. I have seen couple of autorickshaws, so this is another option.

• Just like with Bhongir fort, Medak fort also looks desolated as you keep climbing up the stairs. No person to be seen anywhere. This can be a concern for some (small families or couples). But if you are going there as a small group, this should not be an issue.

Should you visit?

Absolutely. This is a good half day trip from Hyderabad. Lots of places to take photos and enjoy views. Please try carry a cap or umbrella as it gets difficult to walk up under hot sun.