Nandi Hills

Last month I went to Nandi Hills with 4 of my friends. Ofcourse in Bike. Nandi Hills which is 60 kms away from Bangalore is famous as Tippu Sulthan’s summer retreat. Its around 1200m above the sea level.

I woke up on a saturday morning without no idea of going anywhere, whatever. As I felt boring, I sarted to my office which is few minutes walk from my home. As soon as I started my regular mail checking at office, one of my friends from a different house at Bangalore called me up and said that we can go to Nandi hills today. Suddently a plan materialized in front of us. We had three bikes and 5 guys as usual ‘Vetti’ ( Useless / Guys with no work ).

So we started. We went to Hebbal and from there followed the NH7 road to reach Devanahalli. We filled up our bikes’ tank. I felt happy to have my first bike ride to a hill station.

We started at around 11:30 AM. We were on our way in bike. I forgot the names of small cities we went past in our bike. On our way we saw some paragliders, but we had no idea where they were starting. May be this one – http://www.paragliding365.com/index-p-flightarea_details_4822.html

On our way we ate in one of the restaurants (forgot its name). Had cheap good lunch. We saw some ‘ChowChow’ vegetable creeper gardens on the way. We took some nice photos. We didnt take camera as it was a suddent trip. We used our cell phone cams. But one should take a nice camera especially when one is targeting for the famous Sunrise visits at Nandi Hills.

We went through Hair-pin bends and took lots of snaps on our way. Saw monkeys on the way as well. We reached there at around 3 PM (delayed because of dinner) and got tokens for bike parking and entrance ticket.

We went to Tipu sultans guest house. They told there is a temple, but we didnt find any. We roamed around. Saw some colourful flowers. Saw a palace with a Nehru statue on the back side. Nothing much, just roamed around.

As the dusk has started, we started early as one of the guys was an amateur in riding bikes. There was nothing much to tell during our return trip except that we stopped to have a glimpse of the Sunset. Though we dont have much to tell out of this trip we had a fairly good trip with no plan. We had fun while returning as it was dark and my bike head light stopped glowing.

And ya, one can have a great trip to Nandi Hills from Bangalore if they plan better than us. One could try for Paragliding as well, if possible.

Kerala – Gods Own Country – March 21-23, 2008

Gist:

Number of Days : 3

Number of People : 19 [ from Bangalore = 12 + from chennai = 7 ]

Purpose: Old College classmates get together as all of us are working in IT companies.

You may call it as Chumma

Places visited : Kottayam – Cochin – Kumarakom – Vaikom Mahadeva Temple – Cheragundu falls

Details:

It was a usual evening at my company where tasks kept coming, no matter you work fast or work slow. I started at an unusual time of around 5:30 PM from office. I thought of informing my boss that I was about to leave early from office for the tour but he was not in his seat. And my company never insisted on informing on leaving at an unusual time except for something very critical. I reached home at 5:45 PM and already three guys were waiting for the rest to arrive. As usual one guy came late and that made me to reach 6:45 PM to the railway station for a train which is supposed to arrive at 6:40 for just 5 minutes at the Byappanahalli railway station and 3 other guys were already waiting for us there. However, as luck would have it, the train arrived at only 8:15 PM. The Dharmapuri express left at 8:30 PM and reached Dhamapuri at 11:00 PM. As Dharmapuri is the hometown of one of my friend Arun Kumar, his dad and his younger brother came to railway station and provided us with dinner. (Wow!! It was great). Some batch of the guys came by bus to Dharmapuri station where we boarded in an unreserved compartment in Salem train at 12 midnight and went standing in rush (too jammed with few drunkards also, who provided us fun part in the mess) to reach Salem at 1:30 AM. We had booked train tickets from Salem to Kottayam one month back which left us to sleep in the train FILL which came at 2:45 AM only. I completely slept on the way to Kottayam and reached there at 11 in the morning.

FIRST DAY:

We boarded the Mali Hotel just opposite to the railway station by walk. The batch of guys who came from Chennai already had boarded in that hotel and had gone to **FILL** in a cab arranged from the hotel itself. We had quickly took bath and got ready for going in a cab to the same place. We went to Arya Bhavan Restaurant at Kottayam for our dinner where we had good tamil meals. Then we changed our plan and went to Cochin instead of the earlier planned **FILL** as the driver suggested that it very worthy to go **FILL**. Hence we started to Cochin at 2:15 PM and reached there at 4 PM.

The driver took us directly to the Shipyard at Cochin. We paid **FILL** for a package (for 2 hours) trip around Cochin in Boat only for us ( 12 guys ). We saw China Fishing, saw Boat Jetty, Huge ships and Dolphins. Apart from seeing these things from the Boat itself, we went to some Island which had some entry fee (but provided with a Chocobar). It was not very worthwhile, but was not bad either. It was almost dusk and time was around 6 PM.

We took our cab back and went to Cherai Beach which is little away from our way back to Kottayam. We spent some 2 hours at the beach. Some guys took bath at beach water and some just was enjoying their time at beach. Then we changed clothes and left the beach around 8 PM. At 8:30 PM, we had our dinner at Anugraha hotel on the way (they took a lot of time to serve). We reached Kottayam at 11:30 PM. We met the rest of the guys who had come from Chennai and had went to **FILL** for the day. We talked (Maanga) with them and went to sleep at around 1 AM.

SECOND DAY:

Coming Soon !!!