Nandi Hills makes for a lovely drive in this weather.

And the weather’s been bril­liant lately, I’m sure Ban­ga­lore­ans would agree.

Well, talk­ing about dri­ves, a few of us got together, bun­dled our­selves and our equip­ment into Praveen’s Zen and went off to Nandi Hills on a cool and cloudy Sat­ur­day morn­ing, a cou­ple of week­ends ago.

Lavan­nya packed some really yummy sand­wiches, of which I con­sumed, about 15, no less. After a hot cuppa tea at her place, we set off on the drive with Praveen at the wheel.

Vivek was the other occu­pant, while Karthik joined us on the way. And Vineeth joined us when we reached the top.

The drive up is quite a treat, espe­cially early in the morn­ing, when the whole place is cov­ered in a veil of mist. We stopped in the mid­dle and then were back on the road again. At the top, we imme­di­ately set about in search of break­fast. Even after those umpteen sand­wiches, I man­aged to tuck in a healthy break­fast of bread omlette fol­lowed by maggi noo­dles. I blame the fresh air for my embar­rass­ing surge in appetite.

At the tem­ple at the top, the pujari was look­ing on us with hawk­ish eyes, so I quickly paid obei­sance to whichever god was lodged inside the tem­ple. I am hop­ing my prayers (for enough money to buy new lens) will get answered at some point of time.

By the time we reached Tippu’s Drop how­ever, the mist had dis­ap­peared. We climbed up to the top and spent some time lolling around, tak­ing pho­tographs and chat­ting. We had some com­pany in the form of a few romanc­ing cou­ples sit­ting on the rocks and groups of noisy young­sters show­ing off how cool they were by sit­ting on a rock marked ‘dan­ger’ and tak­ing photographs.

We made our way back around noon and we were back at Lavannya’s place by around 1.45 pm. She cooked up some deli­cious dal and I gob­bled that up with some rice and then pro­ceeded on to French class.

A morn­ing, well spent I must say.

Some quick facts:
– Sit­u­ated 60 kms north of Ban­ga­lore, this used to be the sum­mer retreat of Tipu Sul­tan.
– The 600 m high cliff face, Tipu’s Drop, is where accord­ing to leg­end, con­demned pris­on­ers were pushed to their death.
– En route is also Sil­ver Oak Farm where you can have a leisurely meal or even stay over if you want to chill out for a day or two.

Shut­ter­bugs: From l-r: Karthik, Vineeth, Vivek, Me and Lavannya

- The Nandi Hills album