“Everyone drives through Ananthagiri on the way to Araku. The trick is to stop the car, shoulder your pack, and let everyone else keep driving.”
There is a particular kind of place that survives precisely because it is overlooked, and Ananthagiri is the finest example I know of in the Eastern Ghats. Almost everyone who passes through it is on their way to somewhere else. Araku Valley pulls the crowds, the tour buses, the honeymoon packages, and the coffee-country postcards, and Ananthagiri sits quietly on the road in between, wreathed in mist, watching the traffic go by. Most people experience it as a blur through a car window. I want to convince you to do the opposite.
Because for a hiker, Ananthagiri is not the thing you pass on the way to the destination. It is the destination. While the crowds press on toward the famous valley, the trekker who stops here inherits a landscape of coffee-scented forest, hidden waterfalls, tribal trails, and one of the great viewpoints of southern India, mostly to themselves. This is a guide to treating Ananthagiri as the paradise it is, rather than the prelude everyone assumes it to be.
Where Exactly Is This Place?
Ananthagiri Hills sit in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh, in the Visakhapatnam district, on the road that links Vizag to Araku Valley. The town of Ananthagiri lies only a short drive from Araku itself, close enough that the two are almost always bundled together in the same trip, which is exactly why Ananthagiri gets so little attention of its own. It is roughly a few hours by road up from Visakhapatnam, climbing steadily into cool, forested hill country that smells, quite literally, of coffee.
A note on names before you plan, because it trips people up. There are two Ananthagiris in the wider region: this one near Araku in the Eastern Ghats, and an entirely different Ananthagiri near Vikarabad in Telangana. If you are chasing waterfalls, coffee, and the Araku high country, this is the one you want.
Why It Stays Hidden (and Why That’s a Gift)
Ananthagiri’s obscurity is not an accident of poor scenery. It is a simple matter of proximity to a more famous neighbour. Araku Valley has the name recognition, the marketing, and the tourist infrastructure, so it absorbs the attention of nearly everyone travelling this way. Ananthagiri, sitting on the approach, gets treated as a photo stop rather than a place to stay and walk.
For the hiker, this is pure gift. It means trails without crowds, viewpoints where you can hear birdsong instead of chatter, and a landscape that still feels like it belongs to the people who live in it rather than to tourism. The mist that rolls through these hills in the mornings is not staged for anyone. It is simply what the hills do, whether or not anyone is watching. Walking here, you get the increasingly rare feeling of having found something rather than merely visited it.
The Trails and Highlights Worth Walking For
Here is what I would actually put on my feet and go and find, in rough order of how much they reward the effort of getting there.
Galikonda Viewpoint: The High Seat of the Eastern Ghats
If Ananthagiri has a crown, this is it. Galikonda is among the highest viewpoints in the Eastern Ghats, standing at around 3,800 feet, and the vista from the top stretches across ranges of hills fading into blue distance. Reached early, before the day’s haze builds, with mist still lying in the valleys below, it is one of the genuinely great views in southern India. Most visitors arrive by vehicle and stay ten minutes. Come on foot, come early, and give it the time it deserves, and it becomes something else entirely.
Katiki Waterfalls: The Two-Kilometre Reward
This is the classic Ananthagiri hike, and rightly so. A trek of roughly two kilometres, near the Borra Caves area, brings you to Katiki Waterfalls, where water drops some fifty feet into a pool in the forest. The walk in is the point as much as the falls themselves, threading through greenery and stream country, and because it requires actual effort rather than a car park, it filters out the casual crowds. In the monsoon and just after, it is at its thundering best.
Tadimada (Ananthagiri) Falls: The Hundred-Foot Curtain
Also known as Ananthagiri Waterfalls, Tadimada drops from a considerable height, around a hundred feet, and is at its most spectacular in the monsoon season when the hills are streaming with water. It sits a short walk off the Ananthagiri to Araku road, an easy approach that nonetheless leads somewhere genuinely beautiful. For the walker willing to explore the surrounding forest rather than just snap the falls and leave, there is far more here than the roadside view suggests.
Coffee Plantation and Forest Trails
Beyond the marquee sights, the real texture of Ananthagiri is in its plantation and forest paths, winding through some of the oldest coffee-growing country in the region. These are the walks the guidebooks skip because they have no single dramatic payoff, and they are exactly the walks I love most. The air is thick with the smell of coffee and wet earth, the birdlife is extraordinary, and the trails pass through tribal villages whose rhythm of life has little to do with the tourism a few kilometres away. Ask locals, and they will point you toward paths that appear on no map.
Borra Caves and the Trek Toward Araku
The famous Borra Caves lie close by, a million-year-old limestone cave system that is worth the visit in its own right, and the broader Ananthagiri-to-Araku trek links dense forest, waterfalls, and tribal hamlets into a longer journey for those wanting more than a day walk. It is the route that best captures the whole character of this landscape in one continuous line.
Planning Your Ananthagiri Hike
A few practicalities to turn the idea into a good trip rather than a frustrated one.
- Best time to go. October to March gives you cool, pleasant weather ideal for walking. The monsoon, roughly June to September, makes the waterfalls magnificent but the trails slick and the leeches enthusiastic, a trade-off experienced hikers will happily accept and beginners should think twice about.
- Getting there. The nearest airport and major railhead is Visakhapatnam. From Vizag you can drive up through the hills, one of the more scenic approaches in the region, or take the celebrated Vizag to Araku train and taxi across to Ananthagiri. The journey is genuinely part of the experience.
- Where to base yourself. There is accommodation in and around Ananthagiri, including state tourism options, though it is far quieter than Araku’s fuller infrastructure. That quietness is the point. Staying here rather than in Araku is what buys you those empty early-morning trails.
- Walk with local knowledge. The best trails here are the unmarked ones, and the people who live in these hills know them intimately. A local guide transforms a good visit into a great one and keeps you safe on paths that can confuse an outsider, especially in mist.
Who This Place Is For
Ananthagiri is not for the traveller who needs their destinations pre-packaged and their photographs guaranteed. It rewards a different temperament, the walker who is happy to stop where others drive on, to trade a famous name for an empty trail, and to find beauty in a coffee path through the mist rather than only at a signposted viewpoint. If that is you, this is one of the most quietly rewarding hiking landscapes in the Eastern Ghats, and it is hiding in plain sight on a road that thousands travel without ever really seeing it.
Stop the Car
The whole secret of Ananthagiri fits into three words: stop the car. Everyone else will keep driving toward Araku, and Araku is lovely and will still be there tomorrow. But for one day, or two, let the crowds go on without you. Shoulder your pack at Ananthagiri, walk up toward Galikonda in the early mist, find your way to a waterfall through the coffee forest, and discover what the tour buses never will, that the best part of this journey was the place everyone else treated as the road in between.
The hidden paradise was never really hidden. It was just on the way to somewhere more famous, waiting for someone to stop and look. Be that someone. I hope to see you on the trail.
“The hidden paradise was never really hidden. It was just on the way to somewhere more famous, waiting for someone to stop and look.”
Hey there, readers! Welcome to my little corner of the internet. I ain’t just your average blogger — I’m a seasoned project manager with a knack for diving deep into research and unraveling the mysteries of project management. But that’s not all there is to me! With a background in Healthcare, IT and Pharmaceuticals for Project management, hospital management and a passion for travel, hiking, and trekking, I’m all about blending the professional with the adventurous. So, join me on this voyage where we’ll explore the ins and outs of strategy, project management and share tales from the management, travels, and maybe even swap tips along the way.
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