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
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
