Our des­ti­na­tion: Nandi Hills, located about 60 km north of Ban­ga­lore and about 4800 ft above sea level. On top was Tipu Sultan’s sum­mer retreat and the remains of Tipu’s fort still remain. Tipu’s Drop, a 600 metre high cliff face, where pris­on­ers were hurled down the precipice when the king was really angry. Not a place you want to ven­ture close to!

If you reach the top early enough – say between 6–9 am or so — you can expe­ri­ence the mist cov­ered hills and drive through the clouds.

On cycle:

We did first toy with the idea of cycling all the way to Nandi Hills from home and then climb up. We then realised, it wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do on our first long ride. This was a few months ago.

We – The­jesh, Rajni, Ann, Ramesh, Sandeep and I decided instead to travel by car with our bikes till the base and then climb up Nandi Hills. We parked at Sil­ver Oak Farm around 8 kms from the base around 830 am. From there, after assem­bling our bikes we started off.

We reached the base and then started off at a good pace. The first few kilo­me­ters are the eas­ier stretch. Ann and I kept each other com­pany through this stretch (Ann on a gear­less Hero cycle – she’s quite a won­der woman!) while the rest fol­lowed. Till the half way mark, we were going pretty well. We crossed a few other rid­ers on the way, all going down­wards. Another biker — Prashant — flew past us on the bike giv­ing us quite a com­plex but we prod­ded on :-)

We took a break at the half way mark – hydrat­ing and eat­ing bananas and stay­ing away from the aggres­sive monkeys.

From here is the last 4 kilo­me­tres where most peo­ple give up and walk towards the last bit as it’s too steep.

My limbs were protest­ing and I could feel every mus­cle com­plain­ing. By the time we were around 2 kms from the top, my cycling was prob­a­bly slower than walk­ing! But Ann and I didn’t want to give up yet. Prashant had fin­ished his ascent and came back down to cheer us on the final climb. He’s a real enthu­si­as­tic young man and made sure we don’t give up just yet! So on and on we go, each rota­tion of the pedal get­ting painfully harder. Where is the end, is all I could think of! At the final curve (which I didn’t know) I got off the seat to take a break. “You can do it.” shouted Prashant in encour­age­ment. I strug­gled to get back on again (its really tough after you dis­mount on an incline) and ride till the top!

I could see the arch right in front of me, but my body was not too will­ing at this stage! With a final burst of energy, I fin­ish the final incline. The rest fol­low soon after and we do the cus­tom­ary bike salute. Thanks to Prashant for being a big sport and mak­ing sure we didn’t give up and walk!

Of course, the best part was rid­ing down­hill at 50 kmph – what a feel­ing! And not to for­get, the well deserved lunch :-p

On foot:

While Manoj and Athreya were aim­ing to com­plete their marathon 50 km effort (they were going to start run­ning near the Heb­bal fly­over and head to Nandi Hills), Reena and I decided on a slightly shorter dis­tance know­ing our capabilities.

M&A started run­ning around 530 am in the morn­ing. We timed our­selves to start off a lit­tle before they reached Nandi Hills so we all reached the top around the same time. Anjana joined in some­where near the turn-off point at the high­way and ran with M&A. A few oth­ers — Mahesh, Narry, Vasu, Chan­dra — also ran dif­fer­ent dis­tances till the base but didn’t attempt the climb.

Reena and I started off at around 945 am at the idli point – this is the t-junction where you take a left towards the base of Nandi Hills. The first few kms till the base were rel­a­tively but the time of day wasn’t really con­ducive to run­ning with the sun out in its full glory. And a few occa­sional whis­tles and cat calls were annoy­ing but those are the down­sides of run­ning on the road. We had some sup­port in the form of Manu and Nisha who had dri­ven down and we asked them to stay close to us, just in case.

At the base (4 kms from idli point) we saw a few cyclists who had just returned from Nandi. We took a few min­utes and then started our ascent.

The first few kilo­me­tres were a grad­ual climb and we kept up a slow but con­sis­tent pace. By the time we reached the half way mark, I could feel my calf mus­cles protest­ing and my legs begin­ning to tire. We had a “ten­der coconut” break there and then started on the last 4 kilo­me­tres – the steep­est bit. Need­less to say, it was tough. Anjana, who had taken a ride with Amit for a cou­ple of kilo­me­tres (who was in the other sup­port vehi­cle) joined us and we ran the last cou­ple of kilo­me­ters together keep­ing up a con­stant chat­ter to take our minds away from the effort.

A pack of mon­keys approached us mak­ing some dan­ger­ous noises and scared us a lit­tle. What does one do when attacked by a mon­key? Should get some advise on it for later ref­er­ence! On the sec­ond last kilo­me­tre, we bumped into Mon­ica and 2 oth­ers who were cycling back down Nandi.

Manoj and Athreya had now over­taken us pow­er­ing ahead (they were still going strong, well into their 40 some­thing kilo­me­tre mark). Then we turned a cor­ner and sud­denly there was the very wel­come arch of Nandi Hills!

So there — ear­lier I had cycled up and now I had run up! Was a great feel­ing to finally do it on foot. We all did a cel­e­bra­tion run and posed for pics at the arch and then headed on to a very well deserved lunch, again at Sil­ver Oak.

More events com­ing up! Come join the fun!!
Nike Human Race
Girls Run
Ban­ga­lore Ultra
Tour of the Nilgiris

Pics cour­tesy: Amit Rao and Manu Changappa