Dandiganahalli Dam is a small reservoir around 90kms from Bangalore. You travel on the AH-43 (formerly NH-44, Hyderabad Highway) past the Airport Road toll in Devanahalli and then take a deviation from Chikkaballapur. This is a really good place for some peace and quiet since it hardly has any visitors. We were the only people there when we visited.
We started around 6:30am from CV Raman Nagar and reached the reservoir at around 8:20am. You travel on the amazing highway till Chikkaballapur and the roads then go bad every alternate kilometer (NH-69). They are building new roads so the route should be fine towards end of 2017 [or 2018 or 2019 knowing how things work here :( ]. If you start going into villages with people staring at your bikes and giving you weird looks because of your jacket, gloves and goggles then don't worry, you are on the right path. Stay calm and trust Google Maps - https://goo.gl/maps/NFWi9j6ZhF32
In-spite of the bad roads, the route post Chikkaballapur has some scenic view.
We thought we will have breakfast at some small hotel post Chikkaballapur but we couldnt find anything. So if you are planning a morning ride like we did, I would advice having breakfast before you cross Chikkaballapur. We finally arrived at the reservoir all hungry and it was cool with amazing breeze.
You could take some amazing pictures here too. The dam is further up from where we parked the bikes. As per a blog we read, you need to trek a bit to reach the dam. We decided not to do it since we were all hungry and probably couldn't survive the trek :P
It was still around 9am so we thought we will visit Nandi Hills. There are 2 routes to go to Nandi Hills from here, one via Chikkaballapur and other directly via Melekote. We chose the one via Melekote and it was worth the ride. Not the hills, which in my opinion is meh if you don't go there early morning but the route. Freshly tarred roads through fields and forests with almost no vehicles enroute.
We had our breakfast at Hotel Sinchana which is at the foothills of Nandi Hills. The vehicles were less on the top but it was getting sunny. We just walked around the place for a while and then head back to Bangalore.
The roads from Nandi Hills back to Bangalore city is amazing. If you were to do this itinerary I would recommend doing Nandi hills first and then heading to Dandiganahalli dam next. Or you could do Avalabetta or Gudibande fort as part of the trip.
Credits:
My brother Gowrish for planning the trip and my cousins Akshay and Raghupriya for being the pillion riders in this trip :)
No comments:
Post a Comment