Kalyani Dam

The reservoir that gives Tirupati and Tirumala their drinking water lies twenty-five kilometres out, in a quiet valley on the edge of the Seshachalam forest. There is no ticket and nothing built here beyond the bund itself, which is the appeal: water, hills, birds and almost nobody, in a district that receives millions of pilgrims. Late afternoon is when people come, and the reservoir is fullest and greenest between October and February. Daylight only; there are no facilities and no lighting once it gets dark.

Twenty-five minutes from a town of a million pilgrims, and almost nobody is there