Mani: ‘Jo, its 4′
Joel: ‘Hmmm’
Joel: ‘Are we going?’
Mani: ‘Hmmm’
Joel: ‘Are you sure?’
Mani: ‘Hmmm’
A minute later…
Trrrriiiinngggg
M: ‘Hello. Yes Uncle – Thank you!’
M: ‘Hey, get up its the house owner, we better start.’
———————————————————————-
Fridays are so much fun, just because you get two days off, even though you dont really konw what to do. To keep the spirit high,we went out for dinner at Beijing Bites, HSR Layout, Bangalore. Oh and yes, we means Jegan, Dilip, Mani and me (J). After a decent meal with an overdose of laughter we were like – what to do tomorrow?. And as always Mr. M had plans:
M: How about visiting Goat’s Leap
We: What!!??@#$
M: Ok, the place is called Mekedatu, is quite far from here as in we have to bike for some distance around 30 km, then cross a river on foot or boat, and then take a bus, the place is a beauty I heard.
We: Interesting! I’m game.
M: Cool, but the prob is bikes - 5 of us and two bikes only.
We: Hmmm yeah, let’s see..
And then we reached home only to find that Jakku, another of our friends was ill, he had fever and was aleady asleep. We asked him and said he could not make it.
After another round of discussion we decided on Nandi Hills as Jakku had already been to that place and we had not. And we soon decided to see sunrise from Nandi hills. Ambitious ain’t it?
Then started the planning, at 11 in the night, thanks to Google Maps, we found the route. At this point, Dilip was fast asleep. And since we wanted to see sunrise from the hills, we looked up the time fr sunrise in Bangalore – 6.11 a.m.- and we needed atleast two hours to drive to that place. That meant we had to leave at 4 in the morning. We were like – fine we will get up and go, but there was one problem: we live in the second floor and our house owner has a dog which he lets loose in the night once everyone is home and the dog is secured at only around 6 in the morning. So Mani called him up and spoke to him about this thing and he said he’l get up and secure the dog when we leave.
At 4 in the morning:
Mani: ‘Jo, its 4′
Joel: ‘Hmmm’
Joel: ‘Are we going?’
Mani: ‘Hmmm’
Joel: ‘Are you sure?’
Mani: ‘Hmmm’
A minute later…
Trrrriiiinngggg
M: ‘Hello. Yes Uncle – Thank you!’
M: ‘Hey, get up its the house owner, we better start.’
And then, the lights were on, the bags packed, and bikes started.
Mani and Dilip (Right) & Jegan (Left)
It was cold (obviously @ 4 in the morning in Bangalore, you don’t expect to sweat). First stop was the petrol bunk on the way to NH 7 and then when reached NH 7, it was cool. The road was awesome. (No pics here because it was damn cold and all we could think of is ‘keep going’ since we dint want to miss the sunrise.)
The awesome road continued till airport, after which the road slightly seemed to decrease in width 
. And then we reached a point where the road divided into two, we stopped asked the chai wala nearby and continued. At this point we could see light at the horizon. 
We then reached a point where the road branches out to the foot of the nandi hills. Then the sun was almost out. So we took a photo break and enjoyed the beauty. The road was like wow! A simple straight road with trees either side with almost nil traffic – all this in the first rays of the sun. Mornings indeed add splendour!
The road to the heights
Straight ahead for another 20 minutes and we reached the foot of the hills with the sun slowly rising above. And then came the entrance to Nandi Hills.
The entrance
The hills basking in the morning sun
The mountain roads then started. A nice ghat road devoid traffic given the early hours, interspaced with the hairpin bends and garnished with a beautiful early morning view of mother nature. The trip to the top was nice, very nice.
From L to R: Mani, Me, Dilip, Jegan – on the way up
Once atop, we bought our tickets and set about looking around the place. There’s a tippu fall, no that’s not a waterfall as we initially thought. It is a point on top of the hill from where prisoners are pushed over to meet their fate. Then there was Tippu’s summer palace (or ‘lodge’ as mentioned by ASI). The word palace raised our expectations and all we got to see was a ill kept two storey building painted pink with a slab inlayed stating that Tippu occasionally used this as a resting place when he came hunting here. Apart from this the view from the hill top is amazing perfectly supplemented by the morning weather.
Tippu’s Lodge
Few hours later the sun started showing its true colors and that was when we decided to head back home. The trip down was good too, with few people cycling downhill and a good number of young couples on their way uphill.
Few days back when I was coming back to Bangalore from Secunderabad, I came across this point on NH 7 after the Bangalore Airport proclaiming a fort called ‘Devanahalli Fort’ said to be the birth place of Tippu and since we were heading back home slowly and this was enroute, we decided to check it out. The place was essentially a town which was once fortified. The fort walls were nicely maintained even though all that remained was only the fort entrance and then walls supporting the entrance. Hoping that there would be a building or something we decided to explore the town only to discover that there was nothing else at that place.
Devanahalli Fort
On the go for more that 6 hours with no breakfast had got us exhausted. We then decided on no more pitstops or photo stops and reached a hotel, had a good lunch, came home and caught up on the missed sleep.
The essence of a good trip is that is should be both tiring and enriching and this was one good trip indeed.
