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Exploring some off-road trails near Bangalore in a Thar and Jimny

3rd April 2025, 15:55 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

We spotted a muddy trail and the old Mahindra Thar CRDe immediately turned towards it with the Maruti Jimny following it.

BHPian narayanang76 recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

3 Whitefield BHPians offroad trail meet near Kanakpura road, Bengaluru

Last Saturday 3 friends, BHPians in two cars – Old Gen CRDe Thar and new Jimny explored awesome off-road trails near Kanakpura Road, Bengaluru.

D-BHPian @red_liner, S-Bhpian @starter, and me @narayanang76 left early morning 5:30 last Saturday from Whitefield. Mission: take a good break, recharge us and explore some trails near Kanakpura Roadside. We heard some good news about those trails and @red_liner has already shortlisted a few beforehand. Obviously, his rugged Thar has been going out many weekends to similar trails across Bengaluru. @starter joined for the first time and I had done a similar exploration with @red_liner with my Fortuner.

This time, as my Fortuner was getting its 70K kms service done at Nandi Toyota Whitefield before some outstation trips in the coming weeks, I joined the drive as a passenger, videographer and Team BHP thread creator.

Previous Wednesday a WhatsApp message popped up from @red_liner with a Google Map location and asking to join a “short meetup drive” on Saturday. Location was 2.5 hours away so we understand what short meet it will be. Discussion quickly turned into what items to carry, starting with Lays chips packets to recovery equipment, camping chairs, where to plan breakfast and return time. Sounded like a good plan and we regrouped on Friday evening to check readiness and plan for an early morning start. Finalized that we needed to leave as early as possible, to beat city traffic, have breakfast on the way and avoid heat as much as possible. Still, it was certain that the heat will not spare us, and we have to live with it if we wanted to explore those trails.

Finally on Saturday morning 5:30 AM we grouped near @red_liner’s apartment and started off from there on time. We took the city route as the other Outer Ring Road option could be blocked in the early morning for metro works. Driving through Bangalore city in those early hours gave a good feel about the old charm of driving through the city in its older days. Google Maps suggesting taking NICE road first and then a diversion to Kanakpura Road, but we decided to go on ORR and enter Kanakpura Road.

On the way we made a short stop, and it was decided to try breakfast at Vasu Hotel @ Kanakpura town, it was famous and well known for the awesome Dosas, even though there won’t be a place to sit, and we need to stand and eat. It was my first time at Vasu hotel, so I was excited to try it out. We had a very quick breakfast and filter coffee from there and resumed our drives.

After crossing Kanakpura town and still going further on the way @red_liner spotted a muddy trail going towards left and immediately took a detour in his Thar. Jimny followed and immediately after few 100 meters we came to an abrupt stop due to boulders being kept blocking the way. Just getting started with the trails and immediately facing a blocker that way, I was a bit sad, but we saw a small passage on the left and decided to try it. That took to the same blocked spot, with a narrow passage left on the left to climb up and go further. Voila, the rest of the trail was clear. We believe the locals have deliberately kept them blocked to avoid more vehicles entering the place that easily.

From here we will look at these images, videos about these trails and this meet.

First we explored a rock quarry which is fully functional. There are large trucks and pickups lying around and some people working, cutting rocks there. The place looks nice, except the quarry seems like destroyed an erstwhile medium sized mountain.

Saw this large sofa cum bed lying around in the area.

We did explore the area for some time and decided to return back. There was a trail still going further, but it was full of hard bushes and doesn't seem like used recently. Turned around and went back to the main road to try some other trails.