Visakhapatnam

Araku Valley is the hill escape Hyderabad travellers return to again and again: close, affordable and beautiful in every season. The journey starts in Visakhapatnam, which you reach by a short flight or an overnight train, and the most memorable part is the ride up. The vistadome coach of the Kirandul train has glass roofs and wide windows, and it climbs slowly into the Eastern Ghats through 58 tunnels and over dozens of bridges, past paddy terraces, streams and waterfalls.

Araku sits at around 900 metres and is surrounded by coffee estates tended by the region's tribal communities. Sightseeing covers the Tribal Museum, the Araku Coffee Museum, where you can taste the valley's award-winning coffee, the Padmapuram Gardens, and the Galikonda viewpoint, one of the highest points in Andhra Pradesh. Evenings bring a Dhimsa dance performed by local tribal artists, and a dinner of bamboo chicken cooked inside a bamboo stem over coals. In season, a jeep ride to Katiki or Chaparai waterfalls is a popular add-on.

On the way back to Vizag, the road winds through the coffee plantations of Ananthagiri and stops at Borra Caves, a vast limestone cave of stalactites and stalagmites millions of years old. The trip ends with an evening on Visakhapatnam's RK Beach, with time for Kailasagiri hill and the INS Kursura submarine museum if your flight allows. September to March is the most pleasant period, while July to September fills every waterfall in the Ghats. It is an ideal long-weekend escape from Hyderabad.