Nandi Hills and Rasta Cafe`

                 My overly generous office had offered me holidays for 5 consecutive days including the weekend during Dussehra. After discussing the prospects of visiting places near Bangalore (the discussions mostly getting spiced up during our office hours), we finalized on Kodaikanal. But as if to mar our
enthusiasm, Apurv caught a mild fever just a day before our trip. With my other friends not so lucky to have got these many holidays, a long boring weekend at home seemed inevitable.
                 To make up for the lost time, we decided to hire bikes for a day and go to Nandi Hills, a hill fortress located at around 60 kms from bangalore city. Aditya's(better known as HINDON! :P) greediness over riding the bike all day made him suggest that we start off to Rasta cafe at night. Rasta cafe is an all-night cafe situated midway on the Bangalore-Mysore road (exactly opposite to our trip destination). Another friend from office, Ankit had also joined us for the biking trip. We started off at midnight. I had to sit pillion thanks to my stolen driving license (though later i ended up on the driving seat for most of the trip). As we rode our bikes, the city lights gave way to the moon lit highway along the new Bangalore-Mysore road. NICE road is a dark clean patch of 4 lane tar stretching across 111 kms from Bangalore to Mysore.
As the skyscrapers receded back, my mind drifted towards the ambiance around me. Grasslands on both sides looked like empty black spaces under the starry blanket. With no street lamps, the road crawled towards the occasional headlamps of the vehicles speeding across the highway. The cold breeze swept continuously across the face giving a calming sensation. Without uttering a word, we let the calming silence shelter inside us. After savouring the aura around us, we finally reached Rasta Cafe`.
                 With youngsters chatting and playing snooker under a well lit shack,its always Friday in Rasta Cafe`. After having coffee and hanging out for a while, our engines roared again to start off to our next destination. As if to complete the near perfect portrait around us, it started raining, initially only a drizzle and then a thorough downpour. We took shelter under the roof of a chai shop and watched the rain while sipping tea with biscuits at 3 am. We reached Nandi Hills at 6.30 am and knew that we had missed the sunrise already. After breaking off from the highway, we rode on a ghat road on the hills for about 15 kms atop the hill fort, a slight drizzle chilling the already cold morning. A breathtaking view awaited us at the top of the mountain (Around 1500m!!). The houses down below looked like tiny dots amid the morning mist. Slowly, a cold blanket of fog covered the entire land. Nostalgia crept inside me as I remembered Pilani's similar February mist. It was enchanting!
                 Journey back home was tedious but a satisfied ride. The niteout and a morning trip to Nandi Hills had more than compensated for our crashed trip.