A quick visit to Suryanarayana Hills

The Sunday of 12th July, 2009, Deepu took us to the location of his new plot @ Bidadi. Earlier in the day, Asha had called Souji and asked if we would like to join them for which we agreed. I guess thats where the idea of calling a few other folks got seeded. A beautiful cloudy and outcast Sunday afternoon, no big things hapenning in Bangalore and nothing on TV either to sit back home. In a flash, the whole of GRA's (G R Annaswamy Rao, my grandfather!) family was all set to make the most of the day and in 1 hour, 18 folks were on their toes to join the party and visit the plot.

We left our houses at 3:30 PM by our own cars:

Deepu, Asha, Nisha, Anna, Amma in their Santro
Anu Maama, Sandhya Aunty and Deepthi in their Maruti Omni
Jaggu Maama, Shubha Aunty and Amamma in their Santro
Kiran, Anu, Jyothi Aunty, Gopinath Uncle in their Santro
Soujanya, Pooja and Myself in our Maruti!

In less than 45 minutes we glided on the super smooth Mysore Road and were standing in front of his plot. His plot was looking lush green with vegetation. After a brief half an hour of looking around landmarks, connectivty and connecting roads, the program was almost looking to be over. -- OR -- was just the begining! Anu Maama and Jaggu Maama suggested that we check out the Suryanarayana Hills close by, which was suppossed to be good. Nobody had any other plans anyways and considering that the weather was beautiful, there was thumbs-up all around.

So we all got back into our cars, and went off in search of the Suryanarayana Hillock. We had just gone about 5 mins into the drive, the ladies yelled that they wanted a coffee break. We stopped by a local coffee shop. First it was just the coffee and Tea, but I guess it was just a teaser to devouring whatever the hapless roadside mini hotel had to offer. We did not leave till each of us had atleast 2 portions of Gobi manchuri and Masale Puri. As usual, the owner of the hotel had absolutely no count of what we consumed and had to use complex mathematical approximation models to come to anything close to the actual bill.

Deepu and Anu maama made the hotel owner a rich man and in return asked him to help us find the Suryanarayana hillock. The hotel guy guided us through some rough sandy and marshy roads where a couple of our cars got stuck but somehow managed to get past it. Finally in 25 minutes, we reached a gate which was locked by Security staff and only to be told that this was the back entrance to the place. The main entrance was all the way 180 deg opposite and has a beautifully asphalted road right till the top of the hillock!. Again, Anu maama used his magick wand to make belive the security folks that we were not bad guys and the security folks allowed us in. Another 1/2 a kilometer on the rugged terrain, we started seeing a road which looked more car friendly. Finally, we reached the place, a beautifully landscaped garden, A 25 foot high Suryanarayana, majestically standing in his charriot of 7 horses. Really a spectacular sight, Simpy huge and very well structured. Just a few paces around this statue, was a cool green artificial meadow where people could sit down and relax while looking at the beautiful surroundings on all sides.

We spent a lot of time clicking photos of everybody and the setting was just right. All of us had a great time together. We watched the peaceful sunset atop this hill and slowly huddled back into our cars to get back home. This time, we made sure we got out out through the right section of the road. At the exit point, we found that name of propreitor of this property and it was the Eagleton Golf Resorts ! Well well well!

By 7 PM, we all headed home again on the Mysore road. The next agenda was the unfinished business of dining out considering how hungry we all were after all. So we all got back to our house (Vinayadeep @ Hanumanthanagar) for nursing our hungry souls. Masala dosas, Mangalore Bajji's, Plain Dosas from Durga bhavan was packed. A brilliant idea stuck and Anu maama and I struck a deal with the 'GolGappa' guy to get his belonging and serve it in your front yard. In 15 minutes, we made the GolGappa waalah to shut his office for the day and pulled him off to our house.

Everybody were delighted to see so many items getting dished out in a matter of minutes and the entry of a gol gappa store just made it even more entertaining. One after another, everybody took filled their tummies full as if there was no tomorrow. By 9:30 PM we were all done and left for our respective homes after a wonderful day.

What started out as a casual outing turned out to be one of the most interesting Sundays we have ever had in the recent past. It got all all the folks under the GRA family to spend a great day and relax. One more of those events which was never planned but the output was just fantastic. As I have mentioned on my other previous blogs, Unplanned outings has this element of surprise, the element of unknown that brings in a whole lot of exitement.

Need to have more of those. Thanks all for making a Sunday worth remembering.

Check out a few photos that we took during the visit to the plot, Suryanarayana hillock and the dinner at Vinayadeep.

Pooja Sings "Jana Gana Mana" on_Independence Day 2009