Horsley Hills

Horsley Hills
town
Horsley Hills Location in Andhra Pradesh, India
Coordinates: 13°40′N 78°24′E / 13.66°N 78.40°E / 13.66; 78.40Coordinates: 13°40′N 78°24′E / 13.66°N 78.40°E / 13.66; 78.40
Country	India
State	Andhra Pradesh
Elevation	1,290 m (4,230 ft)
Languages
• Official	Telugu
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)

Horsley Hills is a summer hill resort in Andhra Pradesh, about 120 km from Bangalore, India via B. Kotha Kota, 144 km from Tirupati and about 278 km from Chennai. B. Kotha Kota and Madanapalle is the nearest towns and Koundinya Wildlife Sanctuary is located 87 km away from Horsley Hills. World Famous Rishi Valley school founded by late Jiddu Krishnamurthy is falls other side of the hills. It is very near from the new Kempegowda International Airport via Chintamani and B Kotha kota route. Nearest Railway station Mulakala Cheruvu.

History

The old name of Horsley Hills was Yenugu Mallamma Konda. According to legend, there used to be a little girl named Mallamma who was taken care of by Elephants. She used to heal the tribal people on the hills. When she disappeared suddenly, people thought that she was a goddess and built a temple for her.^[1]

Horsley Hills is named after a British officer named W.D. Horsley, the Collector of Cuddapah district. He visited this place around 1840-43 and was impressed by the beauty of the hills and chose this spot for his summer residence. Now the Governor of Andhra Pradesh uses this house as a summer residence and hence this house is called the Governors bungalow.

Tourist Attractions

The narrow road to Horsely Hills is very scenic. It is surrounded with dense growths of eucalyptus, jacaranda, allamanda and gulmohar trees. The major tourist places around Horsely hills are Lake Gangotri, Highview seeing place, Gaalibanda, Environmental park and the Horsley Hills Museum. Horsley Hills is also one of the few places to offer Zorbing in India. But it requires prior reservation a day before and is normally offered on a group package of minimum 20. Other adventure sports conducted are Rapelling and Trekking. The Environmental park known as EEC Centre was built with the help of a hydro geologist and environmentalist from Hyderabad named Balijepalli Venkata Subba Rao, Director of the Center For Resource Education.

Accommodation is available at Harita- a AP tourism initiative. Other smaller private guest houses are available around this. The hills are ideally suited for a day trip and other than the activities at the AP tourism center, there is nothing much else to see or do.

As of October 2014, swimming pool, archery and a reasonably well maintained zoo with a few good attractions are also available.

View from Horsley hills

See Also

• Koundinya Wildlife Sanctuary, Palmaner

References