If you want a short break, but don’t want to ven­ture out too far from the city, Nandi Hills is a good option. The only prob­lem though is that all sorts of crowds land up there by mid-morning and it seems more like a mela out there dur­ing the weekends.

The best time to visit it very early morn­ing, when the mist is still cling­ing on to the sides of the hill and you lit­er­ally feel like you’re in a hill sta­tion. Some­times, the mist stays on till about 10 am mak­ing it a rather cool place.

We headed out there one Sat­ur­day morn­ing on a long drive and it turned out to be a nice relax­ing day. We reached Nandi Hills by around 830 am in the morn­ing and roamed around for a bit. Then we sat near Tipu’s Drop and spent some time watch­ing the dark clouds gather all around : it didn’t rain though so we were lucky.

After spend­ing some time around the area, we went back down the hill and into Sul­tan­pet look­ing for the Sil­ver Oak Farm. It turned out to be a devi­a­tion from the main road and soon we were met with the sound of bark­ing dogs. They were rather large Alsa­tians who came out as the wel­com­ing com­mit­tee but turned out to be a rather friendly twosome.

After we had made friends with Min­nie and Mickey, we got to meet the own­ers of the farm Praveen and Meera Khanna. Meera had pre­pared a nice spread and we could get a whiff of some great smells com­ing out of the kitchen, increas­ing our hunger manifold.

We lazed around for a while and chilled out roam­ing around their farm­house : perched on the slopes of a hill and over­look­ing the plains and hills around. The land itself was pretty bar­ren ear­lier, Praveen tells us, till he planted all kinds of trees here. You can also hear dif­fer­ent kinds of birds twit­ter­ing and call­ing out all around you.

The meal was whole­some and quite a spread so we filled our­selves to our heart’s con­tent. The weather turned out to be rather cool and over­cast so we decided to take another walk after the meal but didn’t get far. One of the other dogs (there are 2 oth­ers besides the Alsa­tians) accom­pa­nied us like he was our guide. When we decided to take shel­ter in the shade of a huge tree next to a tem­ple, he plopped down beside us and sat there contentedly.

We just sat there for well over an hour and enjoyed the views of the adjoin­ing hills from the cool shade of the tree : and then walked back to the farm for tea and cake. It was well past 6 and time to head back : much as we were enjoy­ing our­selves! We said good­bye to Mickey, Min­nie and the Khanna fam­ily and hit the high­way back to Bangalore.

Sil­ver Oak Farm is sit­u­ated in Sul­tan­pet (base of Nandi Hills). The cou­ple, Praveen and Meera have been here for over 4 years now and they usu­ally open their farm for vis­i­tors dur­ing week­ends for break­fast and lunch. They also have a few rooms that you can stay overnight but they do need advance notice.

You can visit Sil­ver Oak Farm web­site and get all the details. If you’re head­ing to Nandi Hills, this is a nice place to chill out after your tour is over.

- The Nandi Hills and Sil­ver Oak Farm album