Yercaud Bike Trip

Yercaud Bike trip !!

Contenders: Sumeet, Amit, Kempa and Aaron !!

Inventory:
2 R15 Bikes, 1 Apache RTR and Suzuki GS !!

The last time I wrote a blog was when we had done the Wayanad bike trip and had enough to share with the web world. Well, after around 9 months of our previous Bike trip to Wayand, we planned another bike trip - this time to another hill station Yercaud (Tamil Nadu). Due to different work shift timings of our group, our plan kept getting postponed to almost a month and finally things fell into place on the 3rd weekend of December.

The main problem with planning a trip for Yercaud which falls in Tamli Nadu was the barrier of language. Being the organizer at multiple previous trips, I was again playing the same role here. Made multiple calls and tried getting information for stay and all I could was some lines in Tamil which my processer failed to interpret.Some of them used to yell repeatedly..."Sir...only Tamilaaaa...!!!". With multiple entries in my recently dialled it for resorts, this led to some funny
incident...more on this in the blog ahead !! Somehow, managed to book resort at SDK resort and that was confirmed. Kempa mentioned that his friend Aaron would be interested in joining us and we were happy to take Aaron in. Planned to start at 4 AM early to beat traffic and avoid the heat later.

Here it starts !!

Excitement steals away the sleep from you as well. Managed to sleep late night only at 1:15 AM and got up at 2:45 PM with the help of a reminder. With so less amount of sleep, I wonder if I am going to enjoy the next 2 days of my bike trip. Quicky take a shower with very hot water. Extreme hot water is just perfect to make me fresh. I make some calls to Amit and Kempa.Luckily, both of them respond pretty well and I continue getting ready. With all things, I lock my room and go downstairs to peep into the kitchen to find that I am bit lucky. 1 chapati and some vegetable n daal is left over and I eat it and lock the house and take out my bike.I start at 3:40 am from home and after quick getting some cash from ATM nearby , I reach silkboard at 3:55 AM.

As usual, I see no one there till 4:18 PM when Kempa finally arrives. Soon after 5 min, Amit arrives with a proud smile on his face for getting late. Aaron comes in another 5 min and we finally start at 4:30 AM. I had planned the break points at most of the tolls on the way to keep all of us aligned. Hardly 1 minute after we start, we hit the electronic city flyover. Amazing elevated highway to start the journey for getting out of the city !! Amit, Kempa and Aaron go for 90-100+ while I am
happy with speed of 80. The first toll post passes and we make sure that we stay in sync...no overtakes.After Hosur (start of Tamil Nadu territory), roads feel heaven.

Its around 5:15 AM and we are enjoy at steady 80-90 with cold winds all the way.Its around 5:20, we take a break at Krishnagiri toll naka and luckily a tea wala comes by and we go for it. At around 5:30, we cross Krishnagiri and the roads there made us do some over-speeding. Kempa tops the battle with 138 on straight empty road while me and Amit manage to get upto 120 on our bikes. Full throttle mode!!!

After a rough ghat section, we encounter a scenic hill with some clouds on top of it, making it a great view. I signal Kempa to take a break. Kempa and Aaron take out their DLSR cams and start

capturing nature. Amit and I are left with no choice..but to pose for the snaps. Sun is just rising and the feeling is just going great riding on these quality roads. We start again and in another 30 minutes reach Salem. Having studies enough on the map, I identify the AVR circle and take left from
there. Soon after this turn, we find a small hotel and decide to have breakfast there. We go for some heavy breakfast. Not much options, but Masal Dosa, Idli and Poori Saag are fine for us.Suprisingly, no tea/coffee available here.

We continue our journey and after around 20 more minutes of driving in the town, reach the start of the Yercaud ghat road. Having done enough riding on the highway, we feel happy to see a new track for driving - The hairpin bends on Ghat road. Ample of curves on the roads and a total of 20 hairpin bends. The bike-lovers Aaron and Kempa forget about snaps on the way and race their bikes to the top. Me and Amit go for couple of breaks on the way to appreciate the ghats. As we start elevating , we could encounter cold climate and bit of fog around.After 25 km of ghat driving, we finally reach the top.

Soon we reach the Yercaud lake and we make few inquiries for our resort. Bit of wrong directions from people around and we end up in the wrong road.We come back to the Yercaud lake circle and find that we are unable to locate the hotel. I call the resort guy and here the fun happens. I had make ample calls to around 8-10 restaurants and in hurry , had forgot to save their numbers by the resort names. I end up calling a resort and check if its our resort. The OVERSMART resort manager says oversmart and nods to that question and send his person to help us locate the hotel. I reach the hotel only to find out that this is some different hotel than the one I had booked for. Already being tired, we decide to check out the hotel. The manager offers us a decent deal and we think to go for it rather than finding again the resort that we booked in advance.

After freshening up, we set out for sight-seeing and decide to take only 2 bikes. No one is ready to drive, after the long drive. Somehow Kempa agrees and Aaron offers his bike to me for riding as he doesn't want to ride. Seeing the good opportunity, I accept his offer. We reach back to the lake spot (roue to all view points starts from here). We decide to for Lady's seat view point first. I enjoy my ride on the new powerful R15 bike and we reach the point. Covered in full of fog, we have no view
there, just FOG. We see a huge rock down from our view point which has the text written as : "BE CAREFUL..there is just 1 Hospital here and 3 cemetries in Yercaud". The pessimist type warning makes us crack lot of jokes. Lots of monkeys around and one of the money attacks the bag of the tourist lady. The fog clears a bit after some time and we see the ghat road which we drove to reach to the top. Some snaps from our photographers and we start from there.

We start for Killiyur falls and after driving some 5 km of bad road, we reach the entry point from where the falls is around 1 km. We walk down around 400 m from there and we find out that we need to climb down some 300 steps to reach the falls. We find a baby cobra on the way. After getting down, we finally see the falls with less water flow.

After spending around 30 min there, we start back...climbing 300 steps is no less than a actual trek. Somehow we reach the top and start for our next point - The Pagoda view point. 10 km of driving and we reach the point which has better view. Tired Kempa sees a good place and lays his tired body on the floor for a nice nap of around 30 min. Amit and Aaron indulge in some random talk. I explore the

Pagoda point a bit further and check out the view from different angle. All feel hungry and we leave the point and reach back the Lake point and find a restaurant called Annapurana. Its 3 PM but luckily we get good veg hot food here.A starter dish and some vegetable-chapati and we are satisfied with our lunch. We start for the next point i.e. Manjuakuttai view point. Cool climate continues here but with no fog and so we are happy to get a complete view around. Amit indulges in some knowledge session about the DLSR functions and requests lot of demos from Kempa. I play some songs from my cell and its a beautiful evening , with cool climate, birds chirping around and light music. After

some time, we find the fog covering the views on all the sides. We take a group pic here.The timer feature helps us here as there is no one around to take our snap.

We then pay a visit to the Yercaud lake and spend around 20 min. Amit , Aaron and Kempa grab a kulfi. While returning, we somehow manage to grab some beer from a hotel.On reaching our resort, Amit manages to request the manager for arranging a campfire  for 1000 bucks. Well, the staff creates the campfire in such a horrible way that the campfire is almost around 5 feet tall. [Almost the height of an person]. Seeing that campfire looks good, the staff moves away. We are set for a nice evening session with some fire, some beer and nice weather. We start our session. We sit pretty near
the campfire to enjoy the warmth. Hardly 5 minutes after we started drinking, heighted campfire losses its balance and the burning woods falls almost on me. With my legs on the chair, I push myself along with the chair to fall on the grass and save myself from any burns. First of all, I ensure that I haven't spill the beer from the glass in my hand, in this process. A risky, yet funny scene. We call the staff again but they are unable to set up woods properly. Seeing their unproductive efforts, we ask them to leave the way it is and ask them to bring more woods for the fire. We continue our session for an hour when finally a student (staying in same resort) completely drunk comes to us and out of control comes near us and starts chit-chatting. Amit, being the smarto , introduces us as we are all 4 brothers working in same company and continues the fun talk with the drunk guy. Some more time near the fire and we order food. Not much options with the resort, we manage with some veg kadai and chapatis. Its 10:30 PM and fog is so dense that the visibility is just around 10 metres. We set out

for a stroll and enjoy the walk in the dense forest with fog from all sides. Amit tempts Kempa to do some awesome photography here as well.

At around 11:30 PM , we reach back the hotel only to find that the 10 feet heighted gates of the hotel are closed and resort manager and staff have slept off. The other drunk people from within the hotel give us this information and ask us if we can climb the 10 feet gate. Time for some action - we manage somehow to cross this gate over the top and the noise of the gate alerts the manager who comes out of his room. By this time, we all have already crossed the gates and made our way in. Manager is bit shocked with our way of entering. We avoid looking at him and quietly enter our room. We are off to bed and Kempa goes crazy here. He puts on the TV for some unknown reasons. In no time, we all are asleep.

Fresh morning and I am up at 6 AM and take a stroll outside. I see that the dogs are sleeping on the burnt woods for some wamrth that we had used for campfire last night. Around 8:30, all are up and start getting ready for the ride way back.At 10:15 AM, we are done with. We request the manager for

a group pic along with the bikes and finally checkout from the hotel. Seeing the fog and clouds around, we decide to have the breakfast only once we are out of Yercaud.

Can't put this in words...But the feeling of rides the bike in the ghat full of fog is a pure thriller. In short time, we hit Salem and are looking for a restaurant.

Being a Sunday or for other reasons, we are unable to locate any good place and finally settle at an ordinary place. We start our journey from there and decide to hit

Krishnagiri in another 90 minutes. Roads complement us and we speed up towards Krishnagiri. Hardly 10 km away from Krishnagiri and heavy rains start. I try to look for place around but no options...so continue getting wet and riding till Krishnagiri. Aaron and Kempa join me at Krishnagiri toll gate. Amit follows soon.And all of us being not so hungry, decide to skip lunch in Krishnagiri and continue for Bangalore. I ask Kempa/Aaron to move on while me and Amit look out for a petrol pump to feed our hungry bikes with its supply.

A 5 min break at petrol pump and we continue again. I put some light music and continue journey towards Bangalore. We reach silkboard and depart for our homes.

All-in-all, long rides, high speed, amazing hair pin bends, beautiful climate, dense fog at Yercaud and that quenches my thirst for the last bike trip of 2014.

--Sumeet

Wayanad Bike Trip

Wayanad Bike Trip:
29th - 31st March 2014

Members: Amit, Kempa and Sumeet

True Excitement/Madness has no definitions , no limits !!!

Its Friday evening 3 PM and I am very excited about the weekend 300 km Wayanad Bike Trip. Since we have planned to start at 2 AM , I decide to leave office early and take some sleep.I reach home at 4 PM and try hard to sleep.But due to over-excitement, I am able to sleep only at 11:30 PM (too late than what I had planned). The meeting point being Banashankari @ 2 AM, I put an alarm of 12:30 AM to wake up. As soon as alarm rings, I am up and in another 15-20 min.At 1:15 AM I am ready. I give a ring to Kempa and Amit to make sure that they are up and on time.Both of them dont pick up the call for couple of rings. Kempa finally picks up the third time and says he will be there in time. Amit , known for his chill-ass approach, is still not picking up. Kempa and I decide to go even if Amit doesn't turn up.Finally after 10-12 attempts, Amit just pings on whatsapp that he is up and getting ready.Me and kempa decide to meet half an hour late at starting point.I suddenly get a weird feeling, while starting from my place, as its the first long ride (plus at mid night) for me. I reach the meeting point and in another 5-7 minutes, Kempa arrives. Amit has not yet arrived.

After waiting for some time, I tell Kempa to park the bike at nearby bus stand and sit there till Amit comes. Suddenly, two policemen standing at other side of road come around and start making inquiries about where we are going, what are we doing etc etc. The policemen indulge in some very vulgar talks to which Kempa and me just react by laughing loudly (Just a fake respect for their jokes). Amit on the way , calls and asks for directions. A bit of guidance on call and finally Amit reaches the meeting point. Finally we start from banashankari at around 2:45 AM. We reach the Mysore Road by 3 AM from where the Bangalore-Mysore highway starts. We are going at a decent 60-70 kmph speed. In some time, we are crossing a check post and 2 hawaldars try to stop us and ask about license, insurance and other stuff.We somehow manage to deceive them that we all have valid papers. We see their sad faces as they are not able to get any money from us.Happily, we move from there. I am driving thinking about the start of this trip - What drives us to start so early? Is this madness? Is this an experience to be taken once? All this reminds of the truck and bus drivers who do this kinda of driving daily as part of their work. The number of speed breakers on this route is irritating and I am sure Amit and Kempa felt the same. Finally, at 5:15 AM , we stop for tea and



 some break. Amit talks about his new jacket which is not so good for protecting from cold. Then we start
the journey ahead and reach Mysore at around 6 AM. As we enter Mysore, I hear a weird sound coming out of my bike and I get a bit irritated.I show it to my friends and after some checking, we identify its the chain that has loosened up. Finding a mechanic early morning is no easy. We decide to continue on our journey and find mechanic on the way.The journey from Mysore to Gundlupet is very slow due to my bike's problem. At every petrol/garage, we were looking for a mechanic but no luck. Finally on the way we wait for breakfast for around 45 min. I am not in a mood to eat much because of my bike problem. Amit and Kempa fill in their stomach tanks and we start again.

Another hour of slow ride and its 9 AM and finally we find a mechanic at Gundlupet who does the repairing (plus some oiling) at just Rs. 20. I am very satisfied after the repair.We take the right turn there for route towards our destination. Its a wide road with no traffic and since my bike is now fine, we all decide to cruise at good speed. We are finally in good flow, cruising at 80-90-100 speed. After 15-20 min, its a sudden surprise - Its the start of the Wayanad Wild Life Sanctuary.The highway passes through this forest which is a beautiful route to drive and view the forest around. We go slowly enjoying the forest view.We manage to get a few snaps as well on the road. The forest route also marks the entry of the Kerala state.

 We are finally in Kerala. We continue our journey. Its more of greenery area after the forest area ends. We take a break at the Sultan bakery area and have some wafers and cold drinks. Its around 10:30 AM and we still have around 40-50 km to go. We start again and slowly the confusion of routes begin, as we start approaching the destination. After reaching very near to the destination, which was as per google maps, we get to know from the localites and home stay owner that its not the correct location. The frustation is buillding up but we continue and finally reach the town Kalpetta which is filled with bit crowdy. A bit of searching and we identify the home stay location.Its situated at a good height from the market and so its a better view of the
town and peaks around.So its 12:30 PM and around 9.5 hours of driving. We park the bikes and enter the room.

Amit and Kempa are contented after seeing the room booked by me. We rest for around 15 min and freshen up. We quickly take out the agenda and identify the places to be covered and decide on covering Edakkal Caves and Karapuzha dam. After freshening up, we move out in the town looking for a decent hotel and finally end up at a good restaurant. Amit wants to try the local stuff and so go for a veg kerala meal. Kempa and I are not sure of the taste and so go for a biryani and a prawns for starter. Amit is very happy with the unlimited meals at Rs.40. Our biryani was decent and the prawns turned out to be very tasty. We were happy with the first meal here in kerala and also with hotel service.We decide to go with just two bikes - Amit's and Kempa's. Being too conscious about skin, Amit makes sure that we buy the sun screen lotion before we move out of town. A drive of around 25 km and we are at the parking for Edakkal caves. The ascend to reach the entrance of the caves route is not too long but its sure to make you feel tired.We take cave tickets and start with the steps. After around 20 min, we reach the caves. We pose for some snaps while Kempa happily takes them. We explore the caves while listening to the guide's explanation. I am not much interested to hear the history and start exploring parts of the caves. Its around 5:30 PM and we are done with the caves and we head next for the karapuzha dam. The route from the caves till the dam is so horrible that Amit is not ready to drive anymore and asks me to drive the bike and he sits behind. We reach the dam and to put it in simple words - We reach the location which is just perfect to spend an evening with best of buddies. The weather is not too hot. The view is amazing and two perfect buddies with you.

We put on some relaxing music and quietly lay down in the rocks as the sun prepares to set. Having an ice-cream , while leaving from the dam , we start back. We reach the room, freshen up and leave down for dinner. Not seeing other options around, we decide to go to the same hotel. This time we go for some vegetable stuff + parathas. We head back for the room and meet the owner of home stay whose bungalow is opposite to our room and get suggestions on the important spots to visit for next day.After getting updates, he leave for the room. Having not slept the previous night and around 11 hours of driving in last 24 hours, we are fully tired and as soon as we reach the room, we are all ready to have some good long sleep. We play some songs on mobile and in no time, we are in deep sleep.

Its a fresh morning and a nice feeling. We are getting ready and we get a knock on the door. Nice breakfast and tea is waiting for our attack. Since Chembra Peak and couple of other major attractions are closed for some reasons, we have more time and different places to cover. We shortlist the best of them and start for the outing.This time, its my bike and Kempa's. This time, our destination , is on different route - The Ooty-Kozhikode route and some mind-blowing views of tea and coffee-plantations. Amit being a pillion captures some of them in the camera. We reach the Pookode Lake in short time. Entering the park maintained by Kerala Tourism, we see that the lake also has boating. We take a relaxing way around the lake while talking pictures and enjoying the dense trees. Its around 11:30 AM and we reach the boating entrance place and purachase the tickets for peddle boats. Our turn has some time and Amit is , as usual, again hungry :P. So we have some breakfast again. Soon, a person shouts out for us informing that its our turn for peddle ride. We happily enter the boat and turn spend around  half an hour peddling and listening to
some cool songs. Amit wants to be adventures and gives specific directions on from where to take the peddle boat - Just to make it a bit exicting and challenging. We then peddle back to the starting point and spend some time in the park. We then decide to go to the next location - Bansura Dam. Amit is hungry again and we decide to have lunch on the way. We spot a nice restaurant and take a halt there. Nice interior. Wifi enabled :) But the food is not that great and we quickly wrap our lunch.

After a drive of another 20 min, we reach the dam. We park the bikes and from entrance, its 1 KM walk till we see a beautiful view of the Bansura river. Even though its hot during this time of season, we see good amount of crowd at this location. A walk of another half km and we reach a nice place at a little height where none of the public is daring to go. We, being adventures people, go there and sit under the shade of some mushroom based structure and share some humorous talks. After some time, Amit spots another location to sit - A climb of few stones and we sit there for some time. An guard at the location comes there and sees us sitting on the rocks.His angry eyes does the talking. We quietly get down. Not sure of his mood, I try to act oversmart by asking him faltoo questions - Sir, Where is speed boat inquiry etc. - just to divert his attention and mood. He keeps starring. Amit and Kempa ask me to keep quiet and I quickly follow it. The guard finally moves away and we head towards the ticket counter for the speed boat. Its a long waiting and Amit buy the ticket for us. Every ride being charged at Rs. 500 and allowing 5 people, we start looking out for 2 more people who might want to join us thereby sharing the per person cost.At 4 PM, the ticket counter gets closed following which a couple comes looking for tickets and we target them. They agree. Another wait of 30 min, and its our turn. The speed boat ride begins and we enjoy the speed and the water drops flying around. Its a pretty long ride for around 10 min thats very much refreshing. The boat-driver gave sudden jerks to the boat by turning left and right suddenly.Very exiciting stuff.We are finally done with the ride and feeling fresh as we leave back for our home stay.

After refreshing , we move out for dinner.We do some walk down the market road looking for any special local items there but find nothing worth buying. We then decide to try some different restaurant for dinner and find one. We then head back to rooms and decide that since best of places in Wayanad are done with, we can cover Mysore Palace and Mysore Zoo for the next day. A small session of hot drinks and we are off to sleep.

Next morning, we get ready by 9:30 AM and are all set to start back for Mysore. We check out , make payment to Mr. Martin (homestay person), thank him and start our journey back. Aware of road directions, we are in full speed and decide to cover up the journey till Mysore in quicker time. Amit is in full form and is leading the race and reaches Gundlupet in no time. On the way back, while crossing the jungle, we find elephants crossing the road. Amit and Kempa are also lucky to view few deers. The fast pace continues for a long time and just 20 km before Mysore, we take a break of 2-3 min and get to know that we have covered good distance in last couple of hours. Next, we reach the Mysore Palace and spent half an hour there. We have a very heavy lunch at a posh hotel (with poorest management).Next, we enter the Mysore zoo. The zoo was too big and we almost saw all of the animals there. We walked a distance of around 10 km or more to complete the entire round of the zoo. Amit and Kempa also told a nap of around 15 min on one of the benches.

Its 5:30 PM while getting out of the zoo and I am bit worried about the timings as I have a night shift on the same day followed by continuous day duty the next day. We start back and we keep an average of 80 and by 7:15 PM, I wait for a break near a petrol pump and find that Kempa is waiting just outside the same petrol pump. A break of 5-7 minutes and we learn that Amit is already ahead and he would be meeting at Banashankari. We start again and we reach Pantharapalya from where Kempa took separate route.

From there bit of lonely and slow drive to Banashankari and again got call from Amit. He has taken wrong route within the city and heading opposite direction of Banashankari. Again some directions from my end and Amit was back with me. Crawling through the traffic, we reached Silkboard from where we headed in different directions.

Around 9:20 PM , I reached home and knowing that I had double shift in office coming up in couple of hours, all I could think of was - The trip was definitely worth it.

Thanks to my friends - Amit and Kempa. Looking forward for more trips with you guys in the future.

Signing off,

Sumeet

Accessory References helpful for such travels/rides/treks:[Get Flipkart on Mobile]
Rucksack Bag

Bike Mobile Holder

Biking Gloves

Waterproof Helmet Camera

WaterProof Panasonic Mobile