A Thunderbird ride to Nandi Hills!

30 Oct, 2016, Sunday: Bike ride to Nandi Hills!

A new entrant to our family, (our shining new Royal Enfield, Thunderbird 350cc in short !) Souji and I had been planning to go out for a drive to see how our vehicle performs. 

Taking advantage of the Long weekends of Deepavli, we planned to have a quick drive to Nandi Hills, about 60+ Kms from Bangalore would be the right place to visit, considering that the drive would neither be too taxing nor too long.

After a wonderful Celebration of firecrackers of NarakaChaturdashi (Day 1 of Deepvali), Ruchir and Pooja stayed overnight at our In Laws place, so we had the luxury to leave Bangalore early and return back by mid day of the Lakshmi Pooja day (Day 2 of Deepavali). The plan being that we had to visit Nandi Hills to catch the famed early morning sunrise.

We left home by 3:25 AM in the morning, fully decked up in warm jackets. There was hardly anybody on the roads till we reached Hebbal by 4 AM. The roads got flatter from Hebbal onwards. That is when we saw hordes of Bikers on the road, all going in groups towards their weekend destinations. It was such a welcome feeling to see the young and energetic youth of Bangalore, active and exploring new things. It also made us feel young as well ;-). Our Thunderbird glided smoothly and it was an exhilarating feeling to realize the power of this machine when you rev up the accelerator. Very impressed with our new possession. :-)

Contrary to popular tastes, I bought this variant of machine expecting that it would make much less noise than the rest of the variants. At slow speeds, it was quite silent for most part. Throttle the accelerator and it shows its true 'Royal' 'gud-gud' ! :-) I am still quite impressed!

We reached the Nandi Hills Check post by 5 AM, only to know there that we have to wait till 6 AM till we are allowed inside. The whole reason of being early was to see the famed Sunrise, where the clouds blanket the whole horizon, exposing just the apex of a nearby hill. And Magic happens when the first rays hit the hill top covered completely blanketed by clouds.

We stopped at a wayside hotel at the check post and had piping hot Coffee. Finally, we gates opened at 5:45 AM, and we reached the hilltop by 6 AM. There were about 300 Cars and 500 Bikes ahead of us!!! To top it all, there was no clouds at all! :-).

The Sunrise was not as dramatic, but it was nice to see new perspectives from the hilltop. The last time I had visited Nandi Hills was about 20 years back and it was the first time for Souji. So it was almost like it was the first time for both of us.

We wandered around the places, taking a lot of photos wherever possible. Saw Tippu’s Summer Lodge, The Kalyani, built by Dewan Mirza Ismail, but spent most time watching the view from the top, which was quite breathtaking.

We left Nandi Hills by 9:25 AM, and returned home in about an hour and a half. Totally, we covered around 150 Kms from home back to home.

Overall, the ride to Nandi Hills was fun and Souji and I enjoyed this little outing very much on our new Bike. Hope to have many more such trips. Here are some photos from our ride.

Drive to Nandi hills!