Travel to Andhra Pradesh - the Kohinoor of India. Andhra Pradesh is the fifth largest state of India, irrigated by the Godavari rivers and is aptly termed the Rice Granary of India. Andhra Pradesh is renowned for its legendary nawabi dynasties, for the magnificent Tirupati Temple, rich literature, vibrant Kuchipudi dance and colourful festivals.

Andhra Pradesh - an intricately woven tapestry of a culturally rich past with a brilliant future, and a present that reflects what has gone by and what is going to be. No wonder then, it’s the most captivating tourist destination of the millennium. Its luring beaches, its sacred places of worship, its lush green forests, its enticing cuisines and its hospitable people wait for you. Discover Andhra Pradesh - a land rich in everything worth living for.

Andhra Pradesh is a state in South India. It lies between 12°41' and 22°N latitude and 77° and 84°40'E longitude, and is bordered by Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Orissa in the north, the Bay of Bengal in the East, Tamil Nadu to the south and Karnataka to the west. Andhra Pradesh is the fourth largest state in India by area and fifth largest by population. It is the largest and most populous state in Southern India. It is also considered the rice bowl of India. The state is crossed by two major rivers, the Godavari and Krishna.

During the Mauryan age there is historical evidence of the existence of Andhras as a political power in the southeastern Deccan. Megasthenes, who visited the Court of Chandragupta Maurya (322-297 BCE), mentioned that Andhras had 30 fortified towns and an army of a million infantry, 2000 cavalry and 1000 elephants. Buddhist books reveal that Andhras established their kingdoms in the Godavari Valley at that time. Asoka referred in his 13th rock edict (232 BCE) that Andhra was under his rule.

The continuous political and cultural accounts of Andhra begins with the fall of the Mauryan Empire. It commences with the rise of the Satavahanas as a political power. According to Matsya Purana there were 29 rulers of this dynasty. They ruled over the Andhradesa for about 456 years from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE.

The fall of the Satavahana empire left Andhra in political chaos. Local rulers carved out small kingdoms for themselves. From 180-624 CE, Ikshvaku, Brihatpalayana, Salankayana, Vishnukundina, Vakataka, Pallava, Ananda Gotrika, Kalinga and others ruled over parts of Andhra with small kingdoms. Most important among these small dynasties were the Ikshvaku. Nagarjuna Konda was their capital and they patronised Buddhism, though they followed the vedic ritualism.

Between 624 CE and 1323 CE a significant change came about in social, religious, linguistic and literary spheres of Andhra society. During this period the indigenous Telugu language, emerged as a literary medium subsuming the predominance of Prakrit and Sanskrit. As a result, Andhra achieved an identity and a distinction of its own. This change was brought by the Eastern and Western Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas and the early Cholas.

The Western Chalukyas consisted of two dynasties. The Early Chalukyas ruled from Badami (550-750) and the later Chalukyas from Kalyani (973-1195). Throughout this period and up to the 13th century, Telugu language was written in old Telugu/Kannada script. The emergence of the Telugu script from the old Telugu/Kannada script started around 13th century and culminated in the 19th century.

The Eastern Chalukyas were a branch of the Chalukyas of Badami. Pulakesin II, the renowned ruler of Chalukyas conquered Vengi (near Eluru) in 624 and built the splendid vesara style Navabrahma temples at Alampur and installed his brother Kubja Vishnuvardhana (624-641) as its ruler. His dynasty, known as the Eastern Chalukyas, ruled for nearly four centuries in all. Vishnuvardhana extended his dominions up to Srikakulam in the north and Nellore in the south.

The Eastern Chalukyas occupied a prominent place in the history of Andhra Pradesh. Since the time of Gunaga Vijayaditya in 848, inscriptions show Telugu stanzas, culminating in the production of literary works in the coming centuries. Later in the 11th century, the Mahabharata was translated partly by the court poet Nannaya under the patronage of the then Eastern Chalukya King Raja Rajendra.

After a brief period of sovereignty under Gunaga Vijayaditya, the Vengi region again came under the Rashtrakuta rule and later the Kalyani Chalukya rule from the beginning of 10th century to the 11th century, when the Cholas managed to wrest control from the Chalukyas. However by 1118 CE, with the defeat of the Kulottunga Chola at the hands of Vikramaditya VI of the Kalyani Chalukya dynasty and the victory of Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana over the Cholas at Talakad, Vengi once again came under Chalukya rule. The Kalyani Chalukya power itself went into decline after the death of Vikramaditya VI. By the end of the 12th century, their empire was split into several local kingdoms, namely the Hoysalas, Kakatiyas and Yadavas. The 12th and the 13th centuries saw the emergence of the Kakatiyas. They were at first the feudatories of the Western Chalukyas of Kalyani, ruling over a small territory near Warangal. A ruler of this dynasty, Prola II (1110-1158) extended his sway to the south and declared his independence. His successor Rudra (1158-1195) pushed the kingdom to the north up to the Godavari delta. He built a fort at Warangal to serve as a second capital and faced the invasions of the Yadavas of Devagiri. The next ruler Mahadeva extended the kingdom to the coastal area. In 1199 CE Ganapati succeeded him. He was the greatest of the Kakatiyas and the first after the Satavahanas to bring the entire Telugu area under one rule. He put an end to the rule of the Velanati Cholas in 1210 CE.

In 1323 the Delhi Sultan Ghiaz-ud-din Tughlaq sent a large army under Ulugh Khan to conquer the Telugu country and lay siege to Warangal. The disastrous fall of the Kakatiya capital in 1323 brought the Andhras, for the first time in their history, under the yoke of alien rulers, the Muslims. In 1347, an independent Muslim state, the Bahmani kingdom, was established in south India by Alla-ud-din Hasan Gangu as a revolt against the Delhi Sultanate. By the end of the 15th century, the Bahmani rule was plagued with faction fights and there came into existence the five Shahi kingdoms. Of these, it was the Qutb Shahi dynasty that played a significant and notable role in the history of Telugu land.

The Qutb Shahi dynasty held sway over the Andhra country for about two hundred years from the early part of the 16th century to the end of the 17th century. Sultan Quli Qutb Shah, the founder of the dynasty, served the Bahmanis faithfully and was appointed governor of Telangana in 1496. He declared independence after the death of his patron king, Mahmud Shah, in 1518. Qutb Shahi rulers adopted religious tolerance and local customs to a great extent. They treated Hindus equal with Muslims and maintained cordial relations between the two communities. They encouraged the local language Telugu besides the Deccani Urdu. The socio-cultural life of the people during the rule of the Qutb Shahis was marked by a spirit of broad-mindedness and Catholicism based on sharing and adopting of mutual traditions and customs. The Deccani architecture, is a combination of Persian, Hindu and Pathan styles. Charminar in Hyderabad, is the most remarkable of all the Qutb Shahi monuments.

Aurangazeb, the Mughal emperor, invaded Golconda in 1687 and annexed it to the Mughal empire. He appointed a Nizam (governor) and thus for about a period of 35 years this region was ruled by Mughal Nizams. Aurangazeb died in 1707 and the administrative machinery of the Mughal imperial regime began to crumble and it gradually lost control over the provinces. It enabled two foreign mercantile companies to consolidate themselves as political powers capable of subsequently playing decisive roles in shaping the destiny of the nation. They were the East India Company of England and the Compagnie de Inde Orientale of France.

During the 17th century, the British acquired the Coastal Andhra region along the Bay of Bengal, then known as the Northern Circars, from the Nizams, which became part of the British Madras Presidency. The Nizams retained control of the interior provinces as the Princely state of Hyderabad, acknowledging British rule in return for local autonomy.

The provinces were at the time governed in a feudal manner, with Zamindars in areas such as Kulla and other parts of the Godavari acting as lords under the Nizam. The feudal or zamindari system was removed after independence.

The Andhras (or Telugu) were at the forefront of Indian nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Potti Sriramulu fought for independence along with Mahatma Gandhi, and later fought for Andhra unification.

India became independent from the United Kingdom in 1947. The Muslim Nizam of Hyderabad wanted to retain his independence from India, but his state of Hyderabad was forced to become part of India in 1948 as the Hyderabad state. Andhra Pradesh is the first state in India that has been formed on a purely linguistic basis. When India became independent, the Telugu-speaking people (although Urdu is widely spoken in Hyderabad and disticts of Telangana) were distributed in about 21 districts, 9 of them in the Nizam's Dominions and 12 in the Madras Presidency.

However in 1953, Telugu speakers of Madras Presidency wanted Madras as the capital of Andhra state including the famous slogan "Madras Manade" (Madras is ours) before Tirupati was included in AP. Madras at that time was an indivisible mixture of Tamil and Telugu cultures. It was difficult to determine who should possess it. Panagal Raja, Chief Minister of the Madras Presidancy in the early 1920s said that the Cooum River should be kept as a boundary, giving the northern portion to the Andhra region and the southern portion to the Tamils. In 1928 Sir C.Sankaran Nair sent a report to the Central Council discussing why Madras does not belong to the Tamils. Although historically and geographically it is a part of the Andhra region, the greater political dominance of the Tamils caused Madras to remain in the Tamil region. According to the JPC report (Jawahar Lal Nehru, Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya, C.Rajagopalachari) "Telugu people should leave Madras for Tamils if they want a new state".

On the basis of an agitation, on Oct. 1, 1953, 11 districts in the Telugu-speaking portion of Madras State voted to become the new state of Andhra State with Kurnool as the capital. On Nov. 1, 1956 in accordance with the recommendations of the State Reorganization Commission, Andhra State merged with the Telangana region of erstwhile Hyderabad State to form a united Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh, the former capital of the Hyderabad State, was made the capital of the new state Andhra Pradesh.

ndhra Pradesh is the home of many religious pilgrim centers. Tirupati, the abode of Lord Venkateswara, has the richest and most visited Hindu temple in India. Srisailam, the abode of Sri Mallikarjuna, is one of twelve Jyothirlingalu in India and Yadagirigutta, the abode of an avatara of Vishnu, Sri Lakshmi Narasimha. Puttaparthi hosts the ashram of popular guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba. The Ramappa temple at Warangal is famous for some fine temple carvings. The state has numerous Buddhist centers at Amaravati, Bhattiprolu, Nagarjuna Konda, and Phanigiri.

The one-million-year old limestone caves at Borra, picturesque Araku Valley, hill resorts of Horsley Hills, Godavari racing through a narrow gorge at Papi Kondalu, waterfalls and rich bio-diversity at Talakona, the beaches of Vizag are some of the natural attractions of the state.

Charminar, Golconda Fort, Chandragiri Fort, and Falaknuma Palace are some of the monuments in the state.

Hyderabad ,Tirupati