On very fine Sunday morning we started our Bike ride to Nandi hills. We had to say good bye to our sleep as early as 4.30 AM on Sunday morning in order to meet our scheduled plan of reaching Nandi Hill by 6am. We were 6 of us planned to go for ride to Nandi Hills. 2 bikes started from Bengaluru, One from Hindupur (AP) and the other one from KGF.
Vinayak Hegde(VMH) and his colleague Murthy started from Hindupur, Me and Adiga started on my bike and Pradyumna was alone on his bike. Pradyumna and I planned to meet near Shivananda Circle at 5AM. But we were able to meet only by 5.15AM. We were thinking that Vardhan will reach the hill only by 8:00AM and were surprised to hear that he was just 20 kms away from the top of the hill when we were still in Bengaluru…!!! Vardhan had not slept in the night and had left KGF by 3am in the early morning..!!! Also he was the only person coming on bike from KGF which is 120 Km from Nandi Hills.
We started from Shivananda Circle and stopped near Devanahalli International Airport to have a cup of Coffee. By then Vardhan was at the entrance of Nandi Hills. He told that it was very misty on the hill and the visibility is of few meters. It was very first journey to Nandi Hills for Adiga, Pradyumna and Vardhan. However I had been to Nandi Hills 3 times before.
It was first trip on my new Hero Honda Hunk which was only 3 days old. Therefore I was not supposed to cross 45 on my speedometer. Even Pradyumna was not leaving us behind. Slowly we reached the foot of Nandi Hills. In between we took couple of breaks to get the beautiful early morning photographs.
We called Vardhan and he told that there was nothing to eat for the breakfast. Therefore we decided to pack some Idly’s from the bottom of the hill only. We were waiting for VMH to come. He and his colleague arrived in couple of minutes. And even Vardhan came down from the top of hill.
We had couple of Idly’s for breakfast and were on our way to the top. It was very jolly ride to the top as the roads are good and have some steep curves. Adiga was taking photographs by sitting Ulta on my bike…!!!!
We were on top in 20 mins. Even in between we stopped to take some photographs. It was 8AM but we were supposed to reach the top by 6AM. We missed very misty morning. We bought the tickets and started to explore the hill. We roamed around the hill till 1AM and took number of photographs. There were thousands of Monkey’s on the hill. We explored almost whole of Nandi Betta and were very much hungry. We went to KSTDC canteen and had our lunch. It was almost on the verge of hill and therefore the view from there was awesome.
We left Nandi Hill by 1.30 and were going to Bhoga Nandeeshwara Temple which is around 9km from the bottom of the hill. We were knowing nothing about the temple had no expectation on how it could be. But when we reached there we came to know that why people we met in the morning were insisting us to visit the temple. The temple is of Bhoga Nandeeshwara which is another name for Lord Shiva. There is another temple on top of Nandi Hill which is called Yoga Nandeeshwara Temple.
Almost 90% of Bhoga Nandeeshwara temple is built from stones. There were some beautiful sculptures in the temple but they were destroyed by some Muslim Raja’s centuries ago. But still the Temple was awesome. It was very silent and refreshing inside the temple.
While we were getting ready on our way back, some people in the temple informed us that Sir M. Vishweshwarayya’s native place Muddenahalli is just 4km from that temple. And everybody seemed interested to visit Sir MV’s house, which is now a Museum.
It’s the advantage one has if travel on bike or on any private vehicle that, we can see all the surrounding places. We were in front of Sir MV’s house in 15 mins. It was closed but the watchman was waiting for anybody to come. We saw Sir MV’s childhood house and then the house which he built when he became Diwan of then Mysore State. The new house is a museum now. The Museum has collection of very rare photographs, awards earned by Sir MV including “BharataRatna” award. We were luckier enough to read the Prajavani of 1960’s which said “Soon Russia will send animal(monkey) to space..!!!”.
We visited Sir MV’s Samadhi and sat there for few minutes. It was very proud moment sitting beside Sir MV’s Samadhi who is known to be the best engineer India has ever produced. For all of us visiting Muddenahalli was more memorable experience than visiting Nandi Hills.
We all said good bye to each other and started our journey back. Me, Adiga and Pradyumna had very nice Coffee and Mirchi on our way back which reminded us of our college days and we were back in Bengaluru by 5pm.