Nandi Hills again - travelogue

Life is a series of unplanned events… And the more unplanned it is, the more exciting the experience will be… Even if you try to plan a lot, you may end up with something else… Totally different from your plan… So if something happens exactly as per your plan, it’s by sheer luck. This is the way I like to approach life. Jus take it as it comes to me… Rather than me whacking my head to plan it and see all my plans getting broken and feel disappointed. Still it’s not practical to live without any plans @ all… So my plans are mostly like old traditional Japanese houses, as the country is located on volcanic islands, where often there are earthquakes… They build their houses with easily collapsible light weight materials to reduce casualties. Likewise my plans are always light weight, flexible and easily re-buildable… And even if broken, won’t cause casualties… Still I like the unplanned events (be it good or bad @ the time of happening) more than planned ones.

I don’t wanna bore you with too much of intro stuff. Yes… I am coming to the details of my second trip to Nandi Hills aka Nandidurg hill. Read about my first trip here. Last time it was with my friend Sreeji… After that I was hoping to visit the hills again with Sreeji  and Sethu and _____ … Yeah you guessed it… My 18 ' 55mm lens which I missed badly in my previous trip… Last time my roomie ' Johnny borrowed the lens from me before the trip… And I was not able to have any wide angle shots in the trip(what ever I can get @ 18mm focal length). But some how or the other, that hope didn’t work out and the trip didn’t happen as either of us will be busy or away from town. Slowly the idea itself faded off and Nandi hills remained as a place already visited in the list and when ever the need for a trip arises, some other location like Bannerghatta, Pottery town and all took precedence.

As I told earlier, it was very much unplanned. It was Lijo Jose, with a friend from Malayalikkoottam(A flickr group in which I am a member) who ignited the idea again. I was in office when he called me on Friday evening(4th September, 2009). He called me to ask if I am coming for a trip to Nandi Hills the next day early morning. I enquired about - who all will be joining in and he reverted saying he just had the idea of trip and need to call other friends from malayalikkoottam and check. I said ‘Ok’ and told him that I’ll update him on my presence when I get home. I checked with Johnny and Sreeji if they have any plans for Saturday. And when enquired, both of them have to go to office, and it was clear that I will have to die of boredom if I don’t go to Nandi hills. I called up Lijo to confirm my presence. Lijo informed me that no one was joining in for the trip which left Lijo and me as the only participants. I suggested that we take my car instead of going on bikes for which he agreed. We agreed to start @ 4.00 AM in the morning from Madiwala and dosed off to sleep. I hit the bed @ my usual time ' 12.00 AM. As promised earlier, Lijo called me up @ 3.30 AM to wake me up. Things were pretty fast after that, after completing the morning chores, I gathered my camera bag, tripod and cap, started my Santro and moved to Madiwala where Lijo resides. I had to wait for 5 mins and Lijo joined me. We set the wheels rolling towards Nandi hills at the agreed time itself.

As it was early in the morning, the roads of Bangalore were comparatively empty except for the vehicles running to Airport. We covered the airport and Devanahalli and turned towards Nandi hills. On the way, we saw a small Tea shop and stopped for a tea. It was still dark and there was no sign of fog in the route and we were afraid that, we may lose the charm of the foggy morning shots. But once when we started climbing the hills, we were relieved as we could see fog getting dense as we go up the hair pins. We stopped a couple of times as my Nikon and Lijo’s Canon was hungry for early morning fog filled shots. We enjoyed clicking the beauty of nature and in between we could see some bikes and cars coming up the way with headlights on tearing the veil of fog. We reached the top only at 7.00 as we enjoyed clicking a lot on the way. Fog still lingered over the hills and it was drizzling slightly. We headed towards Tippu’s drop where Tippu Sulthan used to kill his prisoners by pushing them from the top and letting them fall down from the hill. After clicking till ' 9.30, we had our breakfast there itself from a hotel there and decided to visit Bhoganandishwara temple.

We left Nandi Hills by 10 and climbed down the hills… Bhoganandishwara temple is situated in Nandi village which is located @ the base of Nandi Hills. It follows the Dravidian style of architecture. This temple is more than 1000 years old and was believed to be built by five dynasties over a period of 700 or more years. The Cholas, the Hoysalas, the Gangarasas, the Pallavas and the Vijayanagara Empire. Both of us were busy taking pictures there, as we had lot of ‘subjects’ to shoot. There we found one big pond - Shringi Tirtha surrounded by verandahs. We spend some time there also taking pictures. After we made sure that we have enough pics, we moved towards the car and raced back to Bangalore. On the way back, we saw some grape yards, and people were selling fresh grapes there. We bought some grapes and continued our return journey. Traffic was back to its full strength in the streets of Bangalore and we diluted ourselves in it and headed towards Madiwala… We reached Lijo’s house by around 2.00 ' 2.30 and had our lunch there. After spending some time with Lijo and Aadarsh(Lijo’s roomie) , I bid adieu and came home and started with processing the priced catches of the day. Yet another wonderful unplanned excitement came to an end…

Hope you like it. Waiting for your feedback… Febz

Here is one picture I took on the way…

Lone Traveller