[nnandi]

I think extreme boredom makes even the laziest people do strange things; for me, it makes me read! I have had a decent share of roadtrips and drives for last so many years, unfortunately never got to writing “constructively” and posting it on the net. Being new (-bie) here at t-bhp and having read innumerable number of quality travelogues by fellow bhpians, I thought “let’s start somewhere” and hence sharing my experience of a inpromptu trip done on 21-Dec-08 to “Nandi hills”, used to be outskirts of Bangalore, now much closer, owing to the BIAL.

(I know, you must be saying, “Nandi hills! Is it even a drive at all, leave out a travelogue! But I do not want to be brick-batted badly in this forum, so just taking a chance to post “something” and find out the response! Playing it safe, you see! Infact you would understand how lazy I am, if I said I have done 2 trips after 21-Dec (to Lepakshi on 25-Dec and Yelagiri on 27-28 Dec) but have not yet penned/typed anything down!)

Being a Sunday, woke up late, at 8:45am (compared to 6:30am on work days!) and as a routine took the newspaper and headed straight for the toilet(!). After 40 mins, I was ready to go out on my regular Sunday morning’s most exciting job (for a Bengali that is)- buy fresh fish from Ganganagar fish market! My friend, Arijit calls me just before leaving home and informs he also wants to join. So we start together from Kodigehalli (hebbal) around 9:30am in my Honda Dio scooter/bike (whatever one chooses to describe it, is fine with me, as long as I get to call it a bike!). On reaching the market, Arijit gets excited finding some fresh “bhetki” and picks one, I stick to my regular “Katla” for macher jhol (fish curry), “Seer” for fish fry (kerala style) and a few “Tela piyas” for “ginni” (wife/home minister)!

On the way back (around 10:20am), I tell Arijit that I feel like going out today, instead of staying home for lunch. Due to the lateness of hour, we decide we would do a “quickie” by going to Nandi hills (50kms from our part of town) and coming back before 4:30pm, as he had some work after that. Instantly, we call our other 2 friends, Anupam and Subrata and bounce the idea. They are game. By the time we reach home, it was about 10:45am. I had previously called up my wife and informed about the plan, she was happy not by the sudden decision to go out but that the fact that she need not cook in the morning!

Initially we planned to start by 11:15am, but four families along with kids can hardly do something impromptu! Actual departure time was 11:40am from home. I left in my new Vtec, Arijit in his new fiesta, Subrata in his new Accent and Anupam in his new Indica dicor (New= all of us bought the cars between 31-Aug to 4-Nov 2008, starting with Anupam’s and finishing with mine). To let in on my secret now, I wanted to check the Vtec engine’s power, as right after buying the new car (5 days after), I landed in a bike accident and broke my right hand! And ever since I got my hand back (read: removing the plaster), I was trying to find out my Japanese baby’s true worth!

Out of Kodigehalli and into Hebbal, the clock struck 12 noon. It was around 50 kms to Nandi hills, 32 on NH7 and then after crossing Devanahalli, a deviation on the left for 10 km and rest the climb uphill. We knew that the ride would be quite a small one, over in no time, so we would the give most time for a detailed Sunday lunch.

As expected, road was nice and traffic was less. We reached the foothills from Nandi hills in around 20 mins, stopping in front of “mount view” hotel for a couple of snaps and myself for a smoke. The drive was short but good, I was able to touch 140 once, but the entire road was done at 120 effortlessly. I was a bit scared though, as the cops had earlier caught and fined me once before for speeding to the airport. The accent was good, kept tailing me most of time, but the vtec’s babysteps were a little too fast for the dicor and fiesta to latch on! By the time I was done with my smoke, all four cars had assembled for the ascent.

We started the climb; the road condition was bad till the top. I thought I was looking at the surface of the moon as taken from the latest “Chandrayaan I”, with continous craters on top! At a lot of places, the road was being relaid, so work was going on with piles of gravel everywhere on road. The beauty of the surroundings & foothills were mesmerizing. There were a couple of hairpin bends in the entire way to top. After such a bend, I thought of taking some pictures of my car. I kept the driver seat window down, parked the car on the side and came out to take some pics from the other side of the road. By the time I had taken 3 pictures, I heard huge yells and shouts of my wife and crying of my kid. I ran to them, only to see a “Lays American cheese” wafers packet jumping out of the rear window. On watching closely, the packet was not running in itself, it was in the hand of a small monkey who had snatched it from my 3 yr old monkey’s (read: son’s) hand sitting in the backseat. Naturally had to go thru’ a brief fight/accusation/allegation session with my wife for leaving the window open; she claimed that my love for the car is more than the family. But I insisted that the car was also family (a more intimate and closer one), which resulted in a peaceful (“no-talking to each other”) rest of the journey to the top!

We finally reached the top around 1:00pm. On reaching the top, the only thing which comes to your mind is monkeys! Everywhere you see, are monkeys. And owing to the incident just a few minutes back, my son was wild. His animosity towards the homosapiens were at it’s peak, owing to the loss of his dear “chips” packet! He kept yelling at them in his cacophonous unmeaningful shouts each time he saw one. Finally we bribed him with a lollypop and then dragged him to the temple (only thing on top of the hill) and then to a couple of points from where the view of the valley was good. Took some pictures of the group, family and myself and then headed for the children’s park. Surprised to see that the park was very crowded and the kids playing in the park were all above 28-30 year olds! The real kids were standing for their opportunities by the side of the swings, merry-go-rounds etc. Seeing that, all the members in our group dismissed the idea of letting our children in the park.

So, around 2:10pm, we started our descent from the hills. Touched the foothills (again at Mount View hotel), around 2:30pm and everyone was quite hungry for lunch by then. We remembered seeing some Dhabas earlier towards the junction of NH7, so we headed towards NH7; just before hitting it, we found “sanjay dhaba” being the best of the lot and got inside around 2:45pm, only to find that the place was still packed with people. Somehow they accommodated us by arranging some tables and chairs below the shade of some trees, which infact became quite a cosy place to have food! Everyone went ballistic with orders. They gave each of us a plate of onion/cucumber salad at 3:15pm, which made us feel that food would arrive any moment now! Unfortunately, after a long wait and finishing 2 plates of the so-called “green salad”, at 3:45pm we got our food. Nobody spoke for 20 mins, in that time, all the plates were empty and it never looked that food was served in any of the plates or bowls at all! I had ordered dal fry, butter chicken, egg bhurji, rotis and ghee rice and it cost me 147/-! (So cheap, that too in and around B’lore!)

The rest of the journey back home was quite uneventful except that Arijit was quite vigorously excited after the sumptuous food (think he had eaten off 3 plates of egg burji before even realizing what it was!) and hence he decided to race the fiesta this time around with my Vtec and quite successfully overtook me and made me think all over again, is my car worth the money! Sad! Finally when we reached home, Anupam’s daughter (Ria) gave a comment which made me name this “epic” of mine- “Nandi uncle went to Nandi Hills!”.

Total distance travelled was around 110 kms. Max speed touched- 140. Could not get the FE recorded. Was a good trip (“quickie”) and decided to go more frequently on this impromptu jigs in future! Some pictures below to support the above claims.

BR,
Nandi

Pics Glossary:
1. Deviation taken after NH7.
2. The small "nandi".
3. uphill road.
4. beehives.
5. the "monkey" incident happened at this point.
6. the "monkey" incident- contd.
7. Children's park- ?
8. View from top-1.
9. View from top-2.
10. Taking a Nap.
Camera Used: Sony DSC H10.