Our Nandi Hills trip!

Hi, its been sometime since I blogged…
Well nothing much’s been happening, usual stuff….wake up, yawn, have breakfast, play NFS Most Wanted, watch TV, have lunch, sleep(at least try to!), wake up, eat something, watch TV, have dinner, play NFS Most Wanted, surf the net, yawn and sleep. Yup that’s been my routine for most of the hol’s. Pretty boring you’d say but that’s the way I’m drifting…naturally.
But on one fine day, after much planning, my friend Arun, his classmate Anand and me decided to head to Nandi hills. Well we’ve wanted to go somewhere for a long time and now it was becoming reality.
So after deciding to meet in Arun’s house at 10 am I landed there an hour late (typical of me!), after they watched a bit of the movie “Eurotrip” as a part of waiting for me. We all sat in Arun’s car and left immediately. Filled petrol and headed north. We stopped at a bakery and picked up all that we would need to eat on the hilltop. (We realized early on the way that food prices are proportional to altitude!!)
It was hot outside but pretty cool in the car, we were happy that we didn’t head out on our bikes. We reached earlier than we expected at the base of the hills. I drove a bit under Arun’s watchful eyes. The road took a zigzag path as we climbed and we stopped along the way to take a couple of pics:

That’s Arun and Anand in front of our car.

And a pic of the roadside.

It was a mobile camera so pardon the picture quality.

And then the road turned pretty steep as we nearly reached the top. With sharp curves we wondered how the buses made it to the top. We bought tickets to enter (Rs 60 for a car) and headed in. It was pretty cool and well forested. We parked on a road side and walked (there are men who will show you around for a little money but its best to just walk around and explore, it’s a small hilltop).
We headed to the Tippu Drop. With me walking close to the edge and Arun a little inside and Anand even more on flat land, Anand saw me and asked me to come onto safer land and I replied that it was a gradual drop at the edge and not steep and he could come and check it out for himself but he wouldn’t hear of it. He looked away saying he was getting tensed just watching me walk there. Well I put my trust in my shoes (Adidas) to keep me from slipping (in which case I wouldn’t have slipped more than a couple of feet before being stopped by a rock). Well…my shoes held me on and nobody slipped a couple of feet.

That’s me with the Tippu Drop not very clear above my right shoulder.

And that’s Anand in front.

The Drop’s on one edge of the hill (which is forted on the top at the perimeter) the fort has fallen off at this part and you can see a landing about 15 feet below which has some sort of a small manmade pool. We stood staring around and left wondering about time when Tippu Sultan must have sat in that pool relishing all that his servants brought. He sure must have had a lot of princely delights.
We continued walking around the hill beside the fort.
The fort is a wonder in itself. How could the builders have lifted the bricks to this height with no roads to walk on! They must’ve toiled a lot. It seemed pretty strong even now except in some places where the foundation itself has given way. The fort has these small indentations at regular intervals which I’m guessing were used to place cannons or maybe pour hot oil over any opponent soldiers who tried to climb (which is an old warfare tactic).

Here’s a picture that overlooks the base of the hill through one of these indentations.

The fort also has small square holes on its inner side which lead to the outer side of the wall at a lower altitude. These were used to perhaps see or shoot any opponents climbing the hill. Sometimes one hole splits into 3 on the outer side so that one is able to look in 3 different directions. As of now some of these holes are blocked and some are home to some species of lizards! Don’t dare stick your hand into any of those holes!
As we walked along the fort, we walked into some densely forested part of the hill where the only path broke into many narrow trails leaving us wondering and exploring. Some led us to dead ends. And some led into another well used path. Finally we reached the open part of the hill where we connected back to the road. With a cool breeze blowing it was fun to walk although we were a little tired. We took a short cut with each one of us convincing the other two to take his route that would lead back to the car. We stopped and settled on some steps to open our little bag of edibles. Bakery products and cool drinks. Sharing food and jokes and future plans for our life we rested on the steps in the shade.
What was noticeable on the hills was the numerous couples there, which was annoying at times to find them sitting coochie-cooing behind trees. I guess for Rs 3 a head (to enter the hill top) it’s the cheapest place to take ones partner out of the city.
Then we headed back to the car and started out of the hill at around 3 PM. We were surprised to see people still coming to the hill in bikes and cars. Since it was downhill we let the car roll freely. It was cool and nice. Then we stopped midway for a short break and noticed a burning smell. With Arun’s expertise at cars the source was quickly found out. It was the brake drums! For the downhill ride we had turned off the engine and let the car coast. This needed constant braking at curves. This had taken its toil on the brakes and they had heated up fast.
For the rest of the downhill drive we turned on the engine and “drove” the car maintaining a slow speed with some engine braking.
Back on flat road we hinted at the thought of buying grapes from the numerous farms that line the road to Nandi Hills. But we let it pass not feeling like stopping.
Hitting the highway we sped.
Returning to Arun’s house we split up from there and left to our own homes.