Ahobilam is located in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, in the hills of the Eastern Ghats, about 360 km from Hyderabad. Ahobilam is the place where Lord Narasimha killed Hiranyakasipu and saved Prahalada. We have seen a fascinating depiction of this story in many Telugu mythological movies.
Not just the belief that visiting this place, which has 9 temples for 9 avatars of Lord Narasimha, replenishes one’s karma balance account, but I was also fascinated by the fact that visiting some of the 9 temples required an intense trek in the Nallamalla forest region. Today, we walked over 20,000 steps, amounting to 95 floors of ascent, covering 14 km in challenging terrain (thanks to the summary from the fitness gadget).
However, we could only visit 7 out of 9 temples, as we had started the trek around 11:30 AM, and most temples close by 5:30 PM. Since the entry path to the Pavana Narasimha temple closes by 3 PM, we could not make it to temple number 9. Also, we could not make it to temple number 7. We missed spotting this on the return trip from upper Ahobilam to lower Ahobilam.
The Nine Narasimhasthalas are: 1. Jwala Narasimha 2. Ahobila Narasimha 3. Malola Narasimha 4. Kroda Narasimha 5. Karanja Narasimha 6. Bhargava Narasimha 7. Yogananda Narasimha 8. Kshatravata Narasimha and 9. Pavana or Holy Narasimha.
As you have read in other blogs, some of the temples do require a trek on ‘not-so-friendly’ terrain, climbing hundreds of steps and crossing huge boulders. Though we are reasonably fit, we did have to stop quite a few times to take a break and pause for a gasp or two. However, the entire experience was pleasant and worthwhile. We captured some cool pics
Here are few pics from our trek
There are zillion Monkey around Ahobilam. Sometimes we reminded on the scenes from both Planet of the Apes, or a scene from Jungle Book, where monkeys were strategizing, in our case, swarming to grab food or get attention. We saw several monkeys watching us with sparkle in their eyes, when we slowed down on Ahobilam road. So, we decided to feed organic popcorn and organic mango soft candy that we had with us.
Aniketh and Manikanta said, let us record it. We got it captured this footage on GoPro Hero 4, powered by sound track from PLANET OF THE APES. We thought we were feeding bunch of monkeys. But after watching footage, we realised the bullying monkey, later we named him “Caesar”, pretty much grabbed all of our food. Here is WhatsApp and YT clip just for fun.
Manikanta teaches monkey how to use the water tap. Some footage is missing though.
Sai Chintala's Blog 
Greetings !
We are planning a trek to Ahobilam for 2 days on June 23 2019. Can we cover all the 9 temples by foot in 1.5 days.
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Yes, you can. We could cover 8 temples in about about 6 hours. If we had started early, we could have finished all in a day.
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Hi,
I am curating a dance production on Ahobila Narasimhar. This is my 6th production.
I use high quality images on LED during stage shows. If you have high resolution pics of Ahobilam, and is will to share it with me, it would be of great help.
I would certainly credit you for the images I use in the production.
Regards,
Asha Krishnakumar
(Chennai)
Email: ashakkk@yahoo.com
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