Nandi Hills

The place is here                                                                                                                           

Nandi Hill: Saturday 21st May 23, 2011

We are planning to visit Chennai from a considerable time but could not go there last week due to the declaration of election results in Tamilnadu. I felt the political environment would be tensed and decided not to take the risk. Hence there was a bug in my mind to go on a short trip at least.

And then I saw Team BHP meet in Nandi hills and that inspired me to go to Nandi hills at least. I always heard this is the first choice people suggest to anyone who comes to Bangalore but somehow I had an impression that this is not a great place. So we never felt excited to go to Nandi Hills.

I told Shweta that we will be going to a new place on this Saturday and for that we will start early morning. She was surprised when she heard the time of our start that was 3:30 AM because we never went on any trip so early. She was confused when I took  diesel of Rs 500 only as it indicated it is not too far but why 3:30 then???????

Meanwhile I fixed with Billu that he will also come for the trip, so all was set for the journey.

We got up around 2:45 AM and were ready to kick off at 3:43 AM. The meeting point was Forum and we reached there in 10 mins. While we were waiting we realized that we forgot the camera at home only. We rushed back to get the camera by the time Billu comes; we came back and picked the camera. Billu decided to start moving slowly and we will catch them on the way. We thought that will be good idea. But even at 4:15 AM also the roads were not empty in fact lot of people were on road in such early morning. We could not catch Billu before the new airport but yes just before the Toll gate we caught them. It was 5 o’clock by now. From there it took another 25 mins to reach the point where police had kept a barricading to block the visitors from going on the Ghat road as there were numerous cases of people falling from the hill. We waited there for about 20 mins and after noting our car numbers left us to travel on the ghats. We reached the bus stand in next 10 mins. To enter the Nandi Hills and see the God Sun we need to pay a fee here J . A queue of around 15 people was already there and we started waiting for our turn. They charged us Rs 80 for one car and we can take any number of persons in one car.

And here comes the final lap and we reached the hill top at around 6:15 AM.  And here was a shock for us. A cold chilly wind welcomed us and we started feeling like on a hill station. This made me realize that there are many people there who are in jackets and came with monkey caps and we poor souls were in our Ts.

Next one hour went in coming to terms to the temperature and wind. But the scene was amazing and even in that cold also we didn’t think once to move from that place. Fantastic place… And we started thinking why we had this impression that this is not a good place. It was little cloudy so we could not see the redness of the rising sun but otherwise also the place is very good. Clouds and hills somewhere too far from the top were looking amazing. It is definitely a very romantic place.

After spending close to one hour we decided to have some Maggy and tea. And post that we headed back to Bangalore. Now it was Shweta’ s turn to take the wheel.

On the way back we took some snaps and bought amazingly sweet grapes as there are some grapes farms also. We reached back to our house at 10:30 AM. This completed our 160 km to and fro journey.

Rest of the day went in recovering from the loss of our morning sleep.