The main attraction on our little get-away weekend and the purpose of our trip was to go and hike up to the top of Nandi Hills. I think that Adam and I both thought we’d be doing some serious hiking that day so we were kind of surprised when our driver Naveen told us that we could actually drive to the top! This was an even better option though with 4 kittle kids in tow – especially considering we had left our backpack for Adalynn home at our apartment. Doh! So drive to Nandi Hills we did. There were some beautiful views along the way.
Nandi Hills from the bottom
An old home or temple as we were driving up.
Some of my favorite trees! While we were stopped to take this picture we had an old homeless man approach us that was so frail and thin and he looked so old. We gave him some food and water (we’ve opted to not give money to beggars unless we feel prompted) and he ended up telling us that he was 90 years old! Wow! I wish I would have gotten a picture with him. He was the cutest old man, but it was obvious that life had been very hard on him. It breaks my heart to see these very old people have to resort to begging because their aren’t programs to help the elderly here. So sad.
We also got to interact with some roadside monkeys. We had some bananas in the car that they absolutely went crazy for. This big guy here though was very greedy and stole most of the food from the others though. He was tricksy!
This little baby holding onto his Mommy though about melted me. And ALMOST got me wanting to start trying for baby #5. ALMOST being the key word here. đ
We ended up stopping on the side of the road at a place that was almost to the top of Nandi to see a landmark or old temple. We ended up finding a little trail as we were exploring up through some beautiful gardens and eventually we realized that the little trail we had hiked had taken us all the way to the top of Nandi hills. We didn’t know at the time that we were on any sort of trail so we were a bit surprised when all the sudden we were at the top. It was awesome exploring though because we got to see some beautiful stuff we otherwise wouldn’t have seen had we just driven up. A tender mercy indeed! But because Naveen was waiting for us at the bottom, we ended up having to hike back down too. Even that was no biggy though because we found even more cool sights!
The kids and Adam in front of the Nandi Hills map.
Outdoor temple or stadium of some kind.
One of the views we saw as we hiked.
One of the things you had to be super careful about on the hill were wild monkeys. These suckers were MEAN and if you left your car windows cracked you’d have a huge mess to come back too. This little guy was trying to find his way into this car – but than sat to rest when I snapped the photo. The monkeys also would go up and literally GRAB stuff out of peoples hands. They would growl at them, chase people, scare people etc. We even had a monkey come and try to grab a DRINK out of my hand. Scared me to death. The kids and I all ended up carrying sticks around the rest of the time with us after that. You just never knew when a monkey might come after you. We saw several people growled at or chased or who had food or other items stolen from them during the time we were here. Crazy!
Even getting popcycles for the kids was a bit of a challenge with monkeys lurking everywhere. We opted to just have the kids eat them in the car where it was safe! They didn’t mind that one bit.
It sure is a different world over here! But we are so glad to get to experience it. Its been so fun!
