I am a sucker for the hills. Have been up there in the himalayas on my karizma umpteen number of times and while on the great indian road trip (thegreatindianroadtrip.com) , I got a chance to ride to nandi hills as well. It was in oct 2006, 30th oct to be precise. Along with the Bangalore bikers, we were around 30odd bikers heading in a formation to Nandi Hills. I was told this is the closed hill station for Bangalore people.
The highway is good to start with, and once you leave the main highway for the narrow (by highway standards) roads to nandi hills, you can easily the hills and the clouds hugging them with ease.When I went, at that time, we had a slight drizzle along, and immediately after the climb started, fog was our constant companion. The ride was good, traffic was less, road surface was quite ok too. One thing which I didnt like was that two-wheelers werent allowed all the way up and had to park down. Why so? We all walked up, thru fog, to some shady restaurant and had breakfast there.
Also spent time trekking and seeing around. There was an old mandir, called the Yogandishwara temple, with an old broken loudspeaker doing the honours of spreadin the bhajans around! Nandi hills was Tipu sultan’s summer retreat and it is said that prisoners were thrown from a cliff (called tipu’s drop) which has a 2000 feet drop!On the way back, when the fog used to lift away, we used to get an awesome view of the plains spread ahead in front of us. Overall, the experience was great except for the non-entry of two-wheelers are mentioned by me above.Distance : 65kmsElevation : 1478mtrs/4877 feet