Ride through jungles and a hill station!

As per our last weekend's plan I went on my first ride of this year! My last ride was way back in November 07 to Hampi. In 2 days, I rode 600 kms plus! this is the longest distance i've covered for a 2 day ride. Manas joined us till bandipur, he was doing solo ride to ooty, so he rode with us oneway. It was total of 7 bikes and 8 guys while going and 6 bikes and 7 guys while coming back.

The stats:

Ride Duration: 2 days, 23rd Feb 2008 Saturday - 24th Feb 2008 Sunday

Riders and Bikes:

Vasanth - Zma
Balaji+ Raj - Thunderbird
Kartik Ayyar - Thunderbird
Gaurav - Avenger
Vishal - Avenger
Sunil Dhummi - Pulsar 150
Manas - Thunderbird (one way till bandipur)

Total Kms covered: 600 plus Kms (my trip meter conked! that story follows)

Route taken:

Day 1: Bangalore>Mysore>Nanjangud>Gundlupet>bandipur>masinagudi>ooty(!!)>masinagudi>Bandipur

Day 2: Bandipur>gopalswamybetta>Bandipur>Gundlupet>nanjangud>Mysore>Bangalore


Pics: Click here


Retrospection of the ride:
What to say! Rode my ass off the first day! We managed to hit ooty, the 36 hairpin bends after masinagudi towards ooty, tested our bike's endurace and our riding skills to limits! We climbed down the same hair pin bends at night! rode through masinagudi and bandipur forest area at night! i missed sighting at tusker at night :( This ride was with 2 dramatic events. One of the riders hit an Ox near gundlupet on the first day, thankfully there were no injuries to the rider due to his riding gear and on second day, my zma's ignition switch went kaput!

Had to do some jugaad to ride back. The ride back was awesome! we did good speeds, especially balaji and me were frustrating cagers :P Balaji led and i followed him and it was rip fest at 110 and 120 till outskirts of bangy! Many cagers would have assumed that something was wrong with their cages coz no matter what they did, they could never over take us :P balaji frustrated a tata indica guy so much, that the cager gave up after many kms of trying to tail us :P (with hand guesture to overtake him!) thanks to mysore road's curves, dumb cagers couldn't keep their acceleration at curves, they used to slow down, while we used to flick our bikes at constact speeds :P Over all it was a good ride, marred with two breakdowns, kinda my first ride, where some one crashed and my bike conked temporarily. Also this was my first ride with my new riding pants, Fieldsheer adventure riding pants. The pants rock! they are comfy enough even in hot weather, the knee armour which is adjustable is really a boon, the knee armour was positioned exactly on my knee when i rode my bike and it didn't move around. Overall a good investment!

The Ride log:
Day 1 - 23rd Feb 2007, Saturday:

Left office early from friday's night shift at 2.30 Am and reached home at 3.15 Am, I had already packed most of the things the previous day, so did final packing and rested for a while. Our meet time was 5 AM in Rajajeshwarinagar Arch on mysore road, which was 10kms for me from my place. By 4.15 AM, i was ready after i mounted the cramsters and wore my gear. Parents did the usual pooja for bike and i was on road by 4.40Am. I reached the meeting point at 5 AM. Manas rolled in at 5.10. Finally rest of the guys rolled in by 5.25 Am. Kartik was the last to join and we started the ride at 5.40 AM, with manas leading (he likes to ride at high speeds) followed by balaji and then me, with the rest of junta behind me and kartik was the tail as he had footpump.

Early morning ride through mysore road was great, we did good speeds and gobbled up kms. It was still dark, so the headlamps were doing their job, but still i felt my 55/60w Bulb wasn't enough, time for HID i think :P our first pit stop for breakfast was tiffany's hotel near maddur, we rolled in there at around 6.30 Am, but it turned out that we were too early and the hotel was not yet open. So we took a tea break there. Spotted a yellow Zma R guy with cramster jacket and all, he pulled over seeing our parked bikes. It turned out to be a xbhp member. After some chitchat and introduction to our group, exchanged numbers. He was riding towards mysore, but he was riding leisurely, so bid goodbyes to him and we started off again towards mysore.

The ride till mysore was again done in good speeds. We were in outskirts of mysore by 8.30 AM. We regrouped there and decided to have breakfast in Nanjangud. The ride to nanjangud was manageable through the 2 laned road as it was early morning and there was not much traffic. We stopped at a hotel there and had tasty breakfast. The owner was very enthu about us landing there on our bikes :P he gave us a discount on the final bill on his own! :P We started off towards bandipur by 10.00 Am and the ride was good, but crowded with village folk and cattles at some places. At this point, i was tailing balaji and just kept an eye on the rider behind me. We crossed gundlupet and the bad roads started towards bandipur.

It was bone rattling ride for 20 kms or so from there to our hotel in bandipur. Road was worse than lunar craters and gravel, bikes were bouncing up and down, cages were doing around 20 or 10 kmph avoiding the craters. I did constant 40 kmph with my bum slightly raised from the seat and zma gobbled up nasty craters easily. Then the nightmare ended! Smooth tarmac with light curves started. Balaji started ripping and he was gone in no time, i was in 80 enjoying the curves. Managed to find a nice spot to pee (:P) just before our hotel and i was taking the much needed break, when i heard my mobile ring. It was sunil dhummi calling. He gave us the shocking news.

One of the riders had hit a cow (we found out that it was an ox later!:P) the problem was neither sunil nor the rider who crashed knew kannada and they were surrounded by kannada speaking localities. Only me and balaji knew kannada. So i rang up balaji, he was already in hotel, he came back with manas to join me. We found out from sunil that the incident had taken place before gundlupet! that was good 25 kms plus from where we were! how could these guys miss from the group? It turned out that the rider behind me was not keeping an eye on the bikes coming behind him and also the rider who crashed had slowed down considerably to keep up with sunil who was riding a bit slow and cautious.

Once we realised that they were far, we adviced manas to carry to ooty as he was solo, it wouldn't make sense for him to ride 25 kms towards the fallen rider, through bad roads and again go back, he would get late. He agreed after lot of reasoning from me and balaji and finally left halfhearted towards ooty. I sent off Gaurav and Vaibhav to hotel, so that they can take up the rooms. Me and balaji rode back to the place of crash, through the bad roads and we were relieved to see the fallen rider standing, with out any injuries. His riding gear saved his ass big time. Me and balaji starting talking to locals in kannada and they even let us inspect the "cow" It turned out to be an ox! The rider was around 80kmph, when this ox, led by it's owner was on the side of the road, as he neared it, it had come towards the road, he had tried his best to avoid it, but the left part of the handle bar and crashguard hit the ox and the rider fell the bike took the impact. The ox skated on the road due to impact and had lots of scrapped skin and a broken teeth (!!!)

After getting the picture and making few calls to my cop friend in bangalore, we knew that the way out was to pay nominal cash for injuries of the cow. After negotiating with the localities, we managed to pay them off and took the bike to a near by mech for fixing it as it was not starting. The mech there did all he could and gave up! Thankfully the front forks and wheels were not misaligned, the bike was ridable, the front headlight, speedo consoles had taken the impact, the handlebar was crooked. crashguard bent. Balaji finally figured out the problem to few cut wires, the wires that pass underneath the tank had got cut at a point due to the crash, once we joined those wires, the bike roared back to life. It was 1.30 Pm by this time, more than 2 hours from the time of crash. I had told gaurav and vibhav earlier over phone to start exploring the place as we were getting late. So by the time we reached our hotel, it was 2 PM. Freshened up, had lunch at the hotel and we were doing postmartem of the crash and reliving the incident.

We had to go to Kalahatti falls. Since the crashed bike was not in good condition for ghat roads, the crashed rider rode pillion with balaji and balaji's pillion Raj rode with me. Sunil dhummi was on this Pulsar 150, we started off towards masinagudi, we spotted few domesticated elephants few kms from our hotel and stopped to take pics. The jumbos were crossing the road, two small baby elephants were playing in clay, they were so cute:P We met gaurav and vaibhav, they were riding back from masinagudi and were going for jungle safari, we told them that we would meet them at hotel by evening and we carried on. The roads were too good, we were doing good speeds. Surprisingly, the Tamilnadu checkpost cops didn't stop us for inspecting our documents, we were let through. As we rode through Tamilnadu, we hit place called "theppakaadu" from here, two routes were there to kalahatti falls and ooty, one with 36 hair pin bends and one with 30 kms round about. We chose the shorter one with 36 hair pin bends. This was the point till which gaurav and vaibhav had ridden earlier, they had turned back from that point towards bandipur for safari.



The nilgiris mountain was visible from far, the winding roads with trees covered on both sides were beautiful, we stopped in between for a photo break, took few pics and carried on. Then the hairpin bends started! This ghat section is only for four wheelers and 2 wheelers, buses are not allowed (they take the 30 kms round about route) i could understand why! These roads were so damn narrow, hardly enough for a cage and a bike to pass each other! also the inclines were 60 degree in most of the places, that too right at the hairpin bend! These were the most difficult curves i have ever ridden on! Loaded with pillion and with the steep climb, the bikes were pushed to their limits! at few slopes i was in full throttle in second gear and zma was doing 20kmph! Cages were even worse, i found a honda civic struggling to go past 10kmph! We were the only "Fastest" vehicles to be climbing up the steep roads :P

Finally found the deviation to kalahatti falls and it was big disappointment! there was hardly any water flowing, just a thin stream of water, if we had to go near the falls, it would mean a trek of another 1/2 km. We just took zoomed pics of the water falls (god bless optical zoom! :P) and decided to head back, when we saw a board which read - "OOTY - 13 KMS" We looked at each other and the watch, it was around 4.30 PM. ooty was too near to be missed (last time i missed it when me and sachin were in gundlupet, as he was reluctant) this time thankfully everyone got tempted and we decided to hit ooty! we climbed the remaining hairpin bends and we encountered really bad stretches, some stretches were being tarred, so there was just gravel and stones! after all that, we hit ooty by 5.00 Pm.

Stopped at a shop which had the special ooty chocolates in different flavours. We all bought loads of chocolates and sunil called up gaurav (who was in hotel at bandipur with vaibhav) to inform him that we were in ooty, gaurav didn't believe him! :P then sunil asked gaurav if he wanted any chocolates from ooty as proof, so gaurav asked him to read out the flavours available, sunil promptly read out all the flavours (20 plus) then gaurav believed us with his words "You guys are really in ooty!" we all had a hearty laugh, but later felt bad that they were left behind. Newayz, we had to head back before darkness! we had resigned to the fate that we had to ride through the jungle during night as it would get dark as we rode. So we fueled up a bit in ooty's bunks (Cheaper compared to karnataka) and started the ride back to bandipur at 5.30 PM

The steep hairpin bends were a nightmare when riding down, that too with pillion! engine braking alone wasn't slowing down our bikes, we had to use liberal brakes too! zma was hitting 50/60 kmph in those downward slopes in 2nd gear with out clutch! so much for engine braking! I used lot of brakes, but was cautious as the curves were filled with gravel too! half way through those 36 hairpin bends, darkness descended! we rode very carefully and managed to ride out of the hairpin bends successfully! Was that some ride or what! then the fun started, jungle on both sides and riding through the well tarred road. We were excited as well as scared about encountering elephants in these stretches, so we rode in formation close to each other. We encountered lot of dumb fucks in cages, who didn't know the meaning of dippers! these fuckers used to come straight at us on the opposite lane with highbeams! we would get temporarily blinded due to their highbeam headlamps, frantic use of pass switch by us didn't get the message through to these dumb fucks in cages. Am really looking forward to install HID kit lights in my Zma, so i can show these morons how it feels to be in the recieving end!

We passed Tamilnadu checkpost and till then we hadn't encountered any Tuskers or wildlife, the cops again didn't stop us, they generously opened the checkpost to let us through, but one tata indica guy passed us in the opposite direction, he informed us that there was a group of elephants ahead and told us to watch out. We were really excited, at the same time scared, but we rode on cautiously, but to my bad luck, we didn't see any elephants (i was told that i was wrong later!) we hit the hotel by 9.30 Pm. Gaurav and vaibhav were visibly pissed off that we had ridden so far :P but i apologised to them for the goofup and told them that it was last minute plan. Later we had dinner and booze session, that's when sunil told me that we had sighted an elephant while coming back! i was surprised and asked him when did we ever see it? it turned out that the moment they had spotted it, some dumb fuck cage driver was coming towards us with highbeam, so i was temporarily blinded and missed seeing the elephant, which was standing by the roadside, right in my lane! How dumb was that? They also told me that i passed the tusker with in 1 foot distance from it! that really made me shudder! The cagers are gonna get it big time from me! HID, here i come! After the booze session we hit the bed with plans to wake up early and move by 5.30 Am towards gopalswamy betta to catch sunrise.


Day 2 - 24th Feb 2007, Sunday:

I was up by 4.30 Am, thanks to balaji's phone alarm, he had hid it in his cramster saddlebags, so had to get up to find it! surpisingly, i wasn't feeling tired or sleepy after the previous day's back breaking ride, which i had done with out any sleep on friday, as i had started this ride after finishing work in office. The booze really helped i guess! :P Woke up the lazy bums and all were ready by 5.30 Am. We set out to gopalswamy betta, which was hardly 16 kms from our hotel. It was still dark, so we rode cautiously and we hit the checkpost to find out that they let vehicles in only from 7 AM! last time i had been there with my friends in a cage, we had entered at 6 AM, i totally forgot that we got that entry becoz of my cop friend :P So we decided head back a bit and there was a lake on the way, stopped there and waited for sunrise.



The view was breathtaking, right in front of our eyes, we could see the transition from night to day. The dark black sky started to fade in to orangish colour, later blue as the sun started to rise, the entire scene was breathtaking. Needless to say, we all went click happy, Balaji got spectacular pics taken by his pillion in his DSC H9 sony cam, which captured shots very realistically. Few of the guys went towards the lake to capture the scenery. I started to get click happy too, found good angles with zma and scenery blending in, also with sun rising, i explored various modes in cam and got good pics. Then, the sun rose, with in seconds, it just kinda popped up! we were all surprised seeing how fast the sun rose, it was hardly 30 seconds in total! Then as it was 6.50 Am, we rode towards the checkpost. It opened by 7Am and after paying the entry fee, we all rode up gopalswamy betta.



The Road was straight, with incline, we found a stretch which gave breathtaking view of the entire scenery around, so stopped there, took group pics and pics of the landscape below, then rode on. The roads started to get a bit curvy, but there was too much loose gravel and bad road, we reached the top part of the betta soon. We went to the gopalswamy temple which is on top of the hill and it was closed, so balaji led us through trekking path to spots where he had sighted elephants during his earlier visits. We trekked, huffed and puffed through the way, i was dog tired by the trek (ITC effect i guess!) Managed to reach the top most part of a beautiful hill, far from the tourist crowd. I rested there, while the rest of the guys went further ahead to try their luck and see if they could spot any tuskers. I guarded our stuff which we had carried (helmets, jackets) and took lots of scenic pics from there. Then just lazed around, the silence, the sound of birds chirping, the sound of wind blowing, you don't get that in city no matter how much you are willing to pay! Nature has it's own acquostics, i liked being there, just lazing around and letting the place sink in to me.



After some time, the junta who had gone on a trek to see tuskers came back with disappointment, they couldn't see any elephants :( So we just started taking group pics and few funny pics :P it was time to move, so we hit the hotel and started packing for our ride back. Took a group pic with bikes and riders outside the hotel room and we started from bandipur towards bangalore by 12.00 Pm. We covered good distances with minimal stops, rode in formation, We soon passed nanjangud and mysore. We had crossed mysore by 1.15 PM. We decided to have lunch and proceed to bangalore, so pulled over in to a dhaba on mysore road, just after mysore. Kartik split from here as he wanted to reach bangalore early, so we bid byes to him and the rest of us (6 guys) had relaxed lunch there. We were allset to ride out of the dhaba at 2 pm. That's when we had our second breakdown of this ride!

My zma's ignition was not coming on, I put the key in ignition and turned it to "on" position, but still things were not lighting up in the speedo console. Everyone came back again inside dhaba and we started to inspect things. My first doubt was that the ignition wire which had got cut earlier must have come loose. But to my surprise, i found that one of the wires which was soldered to the ignition switch, had got ripped from the switch itself! now that was trouble! i panicked, i didn't know what to do. Then i called Mr kiran from Sai Motors, whom i had known from the safe riding workshop conducted last month. Thankfully, he answered my call and he adviced me to cut the other wire, which was still soldered to the ignition switch and join it with the wire which had come out of the soldered end. I did that and viola! the electricals came up! I informed kiran that it was working and thanked him for his help. The wires were at odd spot, hard to reach, so i was not able to secure the joint properly, since i had to reach bangalore, i had to ensure that the joint was secure, so i pulled out the wire, by mistake, one of the ends touched the metal body of the bike and i blew the main fuse!

Meanwhile, the entire junta were still witnessing the antics and standing by me and helping me, i told them to carry on was it was getting late for everyone, but they didn't agree and stood by me to give moral support. (thanks guys!) Then gaurav lent electrical tape and i routed the wire to a spot in the front faring, where it won't touch any metal part and neatly secured the joint and taped it. Since i had blown the main fuse, i had to unmount the cramster saddle bags, remove the side panels and replace the fuse ( i was carrying spare fuses) once the fuse was replaced, the bike was ready, everyone heaved a sigh of relief! We had chai and just as we were about to start, balaji had stuck his key in his bull's side box! I had borrowed toolkit from him as my own tool kit was in cramsters, he had lent me the toolkit from his Bull's side utility box, after we fixed my bike, he had put the toolkit back in the side utility box and while locking it, his bike's key got stuck in the side box's lock! He didn't have a spare key either! After some heart in mouth moments, we managed free the key with noseplier. To be on safer side, i borrowed electrical tape from sunil, if the joint loosened again. My electrical tape was used liberally the previous day on the crashed bike.

So after all the fixing, we started at 3 Pm, one hour was lost in fixing the problem. On our way back, balaji was leading, i was behind him, followed by gaurav, vaibhav and sunil. We did good speeds, especially balaji and me, we were finding gaps between cages and quickly overtaking them as we didn't want to get stuck with cages riding parallel to us. Some cagers were extermely frustrated so see two bikes leaving them behind, one of them took it to his ego and tried to tail us, but we didn't bother, we did our usual speeds and stuck to our focussed riding, the cager finally gave up :P We were near Ramanagaram, i signalled for a break, we pulled over and waited for the rest of the guys to catch up. Once everyone showed up, we bid goodbyes as we were taking different routes to home from mysore road. We thanked each other for the wonderful ride and support and rode on. Again balaji led and i tailed. Finally balaji turned towards padmanabhnagar ringroad and i rode on.

Reached home at 6.30 Pm. Thanked god that the jugaad i did din't fail me. Cursed myself for not replacing the ignition set before the ride, miserliness could have cost me big time! But inspite of the fuckups, at the end of the day, every one was safe and reached home in one piece. This ride showed how unpredictable biking can be. But if you treat your bike well and never push yourself to limits, you can come out unscathed. My respect for my bike went up again, she didn't let me down at any odd place, she had warned me earlier about the problem, but i had ignored the warning signs. This ride taught me how to handle the worst of scenarios with out loosing focus or cool in a ride.

Update:

Went to SaiMotors on monday and replaced the entire ignition set. Now i have new fuel cap, new ignition lock and helmet lock. Also a new set of keys :P Costed Rs 850/- had i replaced it earlier, it would have saved me the hassles i faced in the ride. Well, a lesson learnt, replace any spare when you get the warning signs, never do jugaad and wait till it's worn out completely, else as tourer, you can get stranded when you least expect it or worse, in the middle of nowhere!