Trip to Nandhi Hills

For a long time I had wanted to see sunrise from a hill station. And on Saturday for some reason I decided to go to Nandhi Hills on Sunday morning to see sunrise. Generally, Sunday is meant to lazing around, but this time I was determined to start early and catch the first few rays of Sun from the top of Nandhi Hills. I roped in a friend who hadn’t been to Nandhi hills and he was only too happy to join even though the plan was to get up early on Sunday morning.

So, as per the plan the two of us got up around 4 am and by 4:30 had hit the road towards Nandhi Hills. Nandhi hill is around 75kms from Bangalore and is on the Hyderabad (NH 7) route. We reached Mekhri circle around 4:50am and by 5am were on the Yelahanka road. This road has been newly laid and is quite wonderful to ride except for a couple of things which I will address later. The last few times I had been to Nandhi Hills, I have climbed the mountain rather than take the car all the way up. The hill is about 1480mts above MSL and offers quite a picturesque view of the surroundings. And since the last couple of times I had taken public transport, I didn’t know the route too well.

So, as luck would have it I missed the proper route and had to go thru’ a bad road which cost me lot of time. And by the time we reached the top it was around 6:10am and the sun had already risen. But, the scenes which greeted us still made the trip worthwhile. The entire hill top was surrounded by fog and the visibility was hardly 10mts. This offered some good relief from the general kind of weather that I had been experiencing in Bangalore, even though Bangalore is lot cooler now. We reached the Yoga Nandhishwara temple around 6:30am and parked the car near the temple to take a nice walk.

Some Pictures: (These were shot with the camera in the mobile. So, the quality isn’t great)

The pictures show the fog that was present, but still the morning walk was refreshing. (Picture 5 was shot around 9am and the fog was still as thick as it was at 6:30am). It left me with some fever and cold which ensured that I didn’t get out of bed on Sunday, but the experience was worth it. Even though we didn’t catch the sunrise (I am certain that if we had made it to the top, then we would not have got even a glimpse of the sun when it was rising), we had a good time to make the Sunday better.

How to get there:

Go to Mekhri circle and from there take the route towards Yelahanka. Nandhi Hills is around 75kms from here. The road is a 6 lane highway and if the speed breakers weren’t there then you can do pretty decent speeds. I wouldn’t recommend anything above 80km/hr in the morning time as there are speed breakers at every possible crossing. Also, there are no signboards which tell you where to turn for Nandhi Hills (there is a remote chance that I missed them). So, be in the lookout for L&T Concrete Cement factory/Godown and take the left after this. You will see some Army related boards when you take the left. Also, Nandhi Hills is written in Kannada here. So, if you know Kannada then you shouldn’t miss it at all. If you still miss this turn, then another 5-6kms down the road you will see a big arch and the road there takes you directly to the village on the foothills of Nandhi Hills.

Have fun and please don’t litter the place. You can see so much litter around and cleaning that would be an arduous task. Hence, please don’t add to the problem.

Technorati tags: Nandi Hills, Nandhi Hills, Bangalore, Weekend