There is this outcropping of rocks about 65 kilometers from Bangalore called Nandi Hills. It is a nice day trip out of Bangalore and it has some rather cool views.
We set off with the Millers and two other coworkers of Tracy and Angela, Michelle and Stacy. We left Palm Meadows around 8:30 on Saturday morning with a picnic lunch,back packs, coolers and adventure all packed up and ready to go.
For the most part the drive there was somewhat uneventful, the occasional Temple, traffic jam and several wrong turns before we reached.
Nandi Hills has a couple of Chola Temples which we visited and Saravana and Lokesh made Pooja. Making Pooja involves removing of shoes, entering the 'Temple area" and saying a prayer and handing over the cash offering. Then you would tie a ribbon around the closest tree and your prayer has been delivered and some believe answered, at some point.
Well since we did not come equipped with ribbon we found a discarded plastic bag, which are not hard to find, ripped a piece off and tied it around the closet tree which more resembled a bush that had so many pieces of plastic bag tied around it , it is a wonder it is still alive!
Further down the trail, which if you go here with kids you MUST have adult an kid coverage. There are no hand rails or safety barriers and it is a long way down, we climbed rocks and hike up stone faced inclines to get to the historical point of Nandi Hills, Tumkur Drop.
Tumkur was a King a few centuries back who for all practical purposes was nuts. If you so much as looked at him he would have you hauled up to this place and sent down a shoot to free fall about 1000 feet to your death, like I said nuts. It was very windy up there and looking down the shoot or slide if you will gave us the heebie geebies, you know hair on the back of your neck stands up.
We then headed back to our vans to find a place for lunch. We were detained for awhile as the monkeys were using our vans for well a bathroom. These animals will not be missed for one moment by yours truly , then one of theses creatures grabs a cucumber right out of Kay's hand. We had to physically retrain her from going after the monkey, Kay is very fond of cucumbers.
We left and found a nice spot for lunch complete with several thousand flies and a dog who ate anything that we dropped. Even the warm beer and fruit wine we had to purchase to use the "tables" could not take away from the ambiance of the place.
We returned to Palm Meadows to an awesome spaghetti and meatball dinner complete with garlic bread and martini's!!
Then we gorged our selves on fruit and hot melted chocolate sitting by the roaring fire thinking fondly of the first meal we were all going to share back in the states.
Great Fun!
