Nandi Hills

I'm not sure if Bangalore is ever going to be one of those cities where I'll feel like, "ok, I've got it figured out." So, while we've been enjoying our weekends trying to get to know the place better, we were also looking for a little reprieve from the noise and pollution. I had read about Nandi Hills in one of our books and it seemed like a good first trip out of the city. I asked Chandan on Friday if he's ever been. "Oh, yes, ma'am."
"How far is it?"
"It'll take about an hour to get across the city and then another 45 minutes or so. It's about 60 km."
"Well, is it nice? Is it worth a trip?"
"It's a hill with a temple on the top. Not much for us but the foreigners go. Remember that college I took you to (the Mastery School) it's about 45 minutes beyond there."
"Ok, well we are thinking of going tomorrow."
"Ok, ma'am."

With that exciting review, we decided to head out at about 10 on Saturday morning. It did take us about an hour to get across the city and reinforced the fact that I definitely made the right decision about not taking that teaching job.

Here, let me pause to fill you in on a piece of advice I overheard on a plane once. The flight:
Aer Lingus - New York to Shannon, Ireland. George and I are sitting in front on our friends Colleen and Alex. Colleen, who can't not talk to someone who has been kind enough to talk to her, made friends with a young gent on the plane. His name was Chris and while he was a mere 23 years old, he was wise beyond his years. He fancied himself as a jet-setting executive with equal amounts of time and money to spoil his model fiance. (Although he share that he was not gay but there was that one night...) In the span of 4 hours, he claimed to be from every state that Colleen mentioned and also spent lots of time in Ireland and we could be sure any questions we had about Ireland (or the US or business or life), he knew the answer. He gave us answers to questions we didn't even have. One of his best pearls of wisdom was about the roads in Ireland. He said not to worry about driving in Ireland because "it is just like driving on the New Jersey Turnpike only with one lane." Ninety percent of what he said was absurd and after 4 hours, that's alot of nonsense.

Perhaps that story is not translating as funny as it was but in thinking about how to explain the road out to Nandi Hills, I guess some might say it was just like driving on the New Jersey turnpike only with speed bumps every few hundred yards, service stations in the form of road-side stands and lots of open space and cows. I was surprised by how nice the road remained - it was both wide and paved. The speed bumps are also common in the city but seemed a little unnecessary once we got beyond the city. I think since they seem to not have much control over the "rules" of the road, at least they can keep people's speed down. We passed by construction of the new international airport which is so far outside of town, it will add at least another hour onto your travel time. It looked like they were building some sort of tram but trying to use the train tracks already in use.

When we got closer to the hills, we passed a couple of small villages with men, women and children selling grapes on the side of the road. Beyond their "houses" which were more like small, pinkish-orange, cinder block shacks, were vineyards and cow pastures. There were women leading cows around on leashes made of rope. We passed one cow on the side of the road, attached to a truck with a man in the back. Forgive me for being so crude but...there was water - like buckets of - coming out of the cows rear end. It was definitely a clear liquid and a bit startling. Beyond that there were lots of small store fronts (more like the size of a news-stand) with mostly men hanging around out front. But they all seemed to have plenty of Lays potato chips.

We drove up the hill on a very curvy road. Around each bend someone had painted in the rock, "curve 1, curve 2, etc." I think the last curve was about 42. We had read about how you could walk up part of the way but Chandan ended up driving us most of the way. I don't think he understood that we wanted to do some walking. When we got to the top we saw monkeys! And lots of them! And sadly - no, tragically - the movies I took of them did not come out. We think maybe the memory was full. They got surprisingly close to people but were very cute swinging from the trees and (pun intended) monkeying around.

As soon as we left Chandan (who's friend was coincidentally also driving someone up), we had lots of new friends eager to give us a "tour," naturally. They just start walking next to us and talking about the temple and when it was built. After we shooed a few away, like Chandan said, it really was just a hill with a temple on top. (However, most of the people there seemed to be Indian not foreigners.) Apparently, as the legend goes, they used to throw prisoners and other degenerates of society off the cliff at the top. The temple was...old. Once you walked in, it was larger than it appeared from the outside and there were some interesting carvings on one wall. We walked around the grounds for a bit, saw a dead (thank God) scorpion and more monkeys but there didn't appear to be a ton of trails to do much walking.

We had read about a restaurant at the top of the hill over looking the city which was more like a run down diner than a "restaurant." It was the kind of place where I couldn't bring myself to use the restroom. They had sinks but no soap but that wasn't the worst of it.

After that, there wasn't much to do so we found Chandan and made our way back. On the way out we saw a little boy who couldn't have been more than 6 or 7, riding an adult male bike. Because he was so small he actually had to put his left leg (and almost his entire body under the top bar of the bicycle. He stuck his head out next to the bar and was reaching up to the handle bars. He was actually going a pretty good speed but looked a little wobbly.

Another thing that has struck us both about India (but that I don't like to think about too much) is the construction. They are doing a ton of building. Scaffolding, even in the US, never looks particularly sturdy to me but here the scaffolding is just branches, tied together somehow. There are no platforms for workers to stand on, they just stand on the branches (I guess). I saw a group of teenagers one day, shoeless and in regular trousers and shirts (not like a uniform), climbing up the scaffolding like you climb up monkey bars. We've also seen men and women form an assembly line with people on the ground and then people on every "floor" of the scaffolding, and finally another couple of people on the top of the building they are working on. The women on the ground (dressed in their saris) fill shallow bowls with dirt or rock lift it over their heads and hand it to the first person on the scaffolding. That person takes the bowl, lifts it over their head to the person above them until it reaches the top where presumably they are laying down flooring (or roofing?). I have no idea how to build a building but this seems rather time consuming.

They are are building a sidewalk around the corner from our apartment and again, this is mostly women who seem to be spending alot of time moving dirt and rock in these bowls while the men put larger stones into place on the ground. They don't appear to have any tools other than maybe a shovel, nothing to measure, to level, secure anything in place. The women also sweep the streets with these small brooms that require them to hunch over. The brooms, including the handle, are maybe 3 feet long.

Anyway, I'm sure OSHA would approve and it's all very safe. After all, these are the same people who put entire families on scooters - one child in front, father (usually the only one with a helmet), and mother cradling another infant on the back. And we mock Britney Spears for not using a car seat...

There are more pictures attached and I'm still hoping that our monkey videos will magically work...