Wandering the Nandi Hills

“Hey! Want to go out and grab a bite right now ?” said Purva to me on the call. And this is how an unexpected adventure began. That evening’s outing resulted into the successful plan to Nandi Hills. Nandi Hills is an ancient hill fortress in southern India, in the Chikkaballapur district of Karnataka state. It is 10 km from Chickballapur town and approximately 60 km from the city of Bengaluru. The hills are nestled near the town of Nandi. It has been a desire to visit there from the day I came to Bengaluru.

Well like we all know, success doesn’t come at once and it happened with us too. While having our dinner we planned everything out, like our expenses, the time, transportation and most importantly the people who are willing to go. Finally, we three girls (Purva, Gowry and me) were ready to take this new experience by starting the journey at 3 A.M of 2nd June 2019. We booked an Ola Outstation for around ₹ 2000 (round-trip) and began the journey early in the morning. We reached Nandi Hills at around 5 AM and then realized that the gate to the hills will open at 6 AM because it was Sunday the queue of tourists’ vehicles were high in number.

Our plan was to visit early, enjoy the sunrise and be back to Bengaluru before 12 in the noon. But as we reached there we realized that life is not as we plan. While waiting in the queue, we witnessed how India is a country of diversity. There were young people, elderly people, people who went for solo trip in their bikes, couples, families and even drunkards.
As the colour of the sky changed from black to blue with a tinge of pink, the gates of the hills opened, which meant it was 6 AM already. From there, the real journey began, where we started to drive higher towards the peak of the hill. I started to regret as we went high because I didn’t carry any warm clothes to save myself from the cold.

After driving for sometime, we reached our destination where our next struggle began, the queue for the tickets of entrance to Nandi Hills. It was really hard to figure out where the queue started from because everyone wanted to get the tickets at first which actually ended messing up. But after quite a struggle we figured out the start of the queue and also got our tickets which charged ₹ 150 (including 3 people’s tickets, camera and parking charges).

The view was filled with clouds which allowed us to have a sight of 0.5 Km, not more than that. Purva was the in charge of the camera, Gowry searched for the source of the River Arkavati and I was trying to figure out photogenic spots. Due to the foggy situation, it was really hard to capture a good picture as we all know that the sun is the most essential factor for a perfect picture. Still, without the sun we took a chance and got some pictures. We were getting “Hogwart’s vibe” from that environment which was really exciting. There was a main road which allowed the vehicles to drive up and a parking place was available too.

Staircases were available to go down near the sources of the river or even to climb upwards. As we climbed up, monkeys started to show up. We covered the Tipu’s drop, the rivers’ sources and the temples. The place was filled with greens and other colours and also with fog. We had limited time with us and so we started to climb down around 9 AM, encountering all the places we had seen while going up. The only difference was that while coming down, the sunlight also accompanied us. We had our breakfast in a South Indian restaurant at the foot of Nandi Hills.

We drove back to reality around 10 AM which included the sun and some of our favorite music. I realized that we reached Bengaluru with the sudden change in the atmosphere. We were able to feel the difference, how cool the Nandi Hills are and how hostile Bengaluru is. While coming back, all my long drives started to flash in front of me. Long drives have been a part of my life since I was 5 years old. It has been a family tradition. But this time, it has been my very first with my friends and also the first of year 2019. This journey made me realize how similar Guwahati (Assam) and Bengaluru (Karnataka) is. We always tend to escape to Shillong (Meghalaya) from Guwahati and so we did to Nandi Hills from Bengaluru. The peak of the Nandi Hills constantly made me remember about Shillong peak.

And here is another experience of mine which proved that sudden plans are awesome and there is no worries if you’ve got your friends with you. We slept on our way back to reality and we reached our home around 12 PM, which was as expected. This was how a call can end up changing the reality for few hours. Feel free to share your experiences and ask more about the trip if you want to know.