Ideal Time for Visit: October - January Horsley Hills is a famous summer hill resort in Andhra Pradesh, about 140 km from Bangalore, India and 144 km from Tirupathi. Madanapalle is the closest town near the hills. The major tourist attractions here include the Mallamma temple and the Rishi Valley School. Horsely Hills is the departure point for the Koundinya Wildlife Sanctuary located 87 km away.
The old name of Horsley Hills was Yenugu Mallamma Konda,situated in kurnool district . 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. 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.The narrow road to Horsely Hills is very scenic. It is surrounded throughout its entire length 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 a 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 hydrogeologist and environmentalist from Hyderabad named Balijepalli Venkata S***a Rao, Director of the Centre For Resource Education. He spent the early years of his career in building EEC centres all over Andhra Pradesh trying to educate the common man about the importance of saving the environment and encouraging Eco Tourism.
