How Telangana’s Kavali Chandrakanth put hidden villages on Google Maps
HYDERABAD: For Kavali Chandrakanth, photography did not start as a job. Instead, he wanted to put his home village on the map. Almost ten years later, his mission grew into a collection of thousands of photos, many videos, hundreds of mapped places, and a solo show at the State Art Gallery.
Chandrakanth is from Peddamunagalachedu, a village in Addakal Mandal of Mahbubnagar district. He got a Diploma in Electrical and Electronics at TRR Polytechnic in Meerpet and finished his B.Tech at CMR College in Medchal. Now, he works at his job and does photography and digital mapping.
Chandrakanth started his journey during college. However, when he searched for his village on Google, he found nothing, no photos, no info, no sign of it online. This gap pushed him to start a project to show Telangana’s hidden places.
Since 2017, he has uploaded over 23,000 photos and almost 3,900 videos to Google Maps as a Local Guide. In addition, he has marked more than 289 places that were not listed before. He earned over 135,000 points, and his photos have been viewed more than 409 million times.
One of his photos, taken at Ananthagiri Hills, was picked as one of Google Local Guides’ Top 10 Photos from Hyderabad. Furthermore, he is proud that the first picture you see when you search for Charminar on Google Maps is his own. “It’s not just about numbers. More importantly, when someone visits a place because of your photo, it feels worth it,” says Chandrakanth told HyderabadMail in an exclusive conversation.
From a Village Exhibition to Mapography
Chandrakanth shares his photos on Wikipedia and Wikimedia, uploading pictures of temples, monuments, and historic places that had little or no online presence before. He is also part of the Kotha Telangana Charitra Brundam, a group that studies Telangana’s history and culture. In 2025, he found a medieval rock art site in Mahbubnagar district.
He has geo-tagged all 14 villages in Addakal Mandal and recorded historic sites in districts like Warangal, Khammam, Medak, Sangareddy, and Nizamabad. These include old Chalukya-era Shiva temples and lesser-known Kalabhairava Swamy shrines. Additionally, he mapped Hyderabad’s IT corridor by uploading photos of office buildings and new global capability centers to help job-seekers and visitors. He says all his work is done on smartphones.
Chandrakanth’s first photo show, called Pragathi Pathamlo Peddamunagalachedu, showed how his village had changed over time. This exhibition paved the way for a bigger show years later.
Chandrakanth got the idea for his exhibition, Mapography, after meeting Dr. Mamidi Harikrishna, Director of Language and Culture. During their conversation, he shared his wish to show his photos and mapping work. Dr. Harikrishna encouraged him, and Chandrakanth picked 51 photos taken on his phone for the exhibition at the State Art Gallery in Madhapur in 2025. For Chandrakanth, years of quiet, voluntary work were driven by a simple idea: making local places visible to the world, one photo at a time.
