Ride to Kailashagiri and Unisey Thopu

Wanted to do a short ride on a lazy Sunday. Had left the planning to professor, but with a condition that this time the route and place should be new. Trust the professor for routes and as usual the ride plan was in place with Professor in lead. As usual there were last minute drop outs and four of us ended up doing this short ride. Professor had east ward plans towards chintamani (AP) route, I hadn’t ventured towards that route so I readily agreed.

Riders and Bikes:

1. Professor – Unicorn
2. Vasanth – Karizma
3. Balaji – Thunderbird
4. Santoosh – Pulsar 180/200 :P

Route:
Bangalore>Hoskote>Chitamani Road>Kaivara>kailashagiri>Devanahalli>Bangalore

Pics:
My Pics: Click here

Ride Log:

Met up with Santoosh first near ulsoor and waited for my colleague :P Balaji. Then we three proceeded towards the hanging bridge where professor was waiting for us. The road towards hoskote from there was full of traffic and with odd potholes and humps. It was frustrating initially to ride, later got in to the groove. Just after hoskote, the tarmac improved and traffic dwindled. Santoosh and Balaji were ahead of me and professor was tailing me, so I proceeded further, happy that I could raise the throttle after a long time. Then I could see Balaji behind me honking! I had over shot the deviation and went straight seeing the good roads! So took a U turn and joined the junction were the other 2 were waiting. This was chintamani road and it was fabulous to ride on. No potholes, no traffic and no road humps! Good smooth tarmac and some good short curves. We stopped at a curve to take a butt break.



I started taking pics. I wanted to try out the bull, so off I went for a short spin on it. On my return, all were suggesting that I dump my zma and get a bull as it was suiting my profile! Balaji was using all his convincing skills to make me a bulleteer :P But, iam not a bull type person, it’s fun for me to take a bull for a spin once in a while, but a bull cannot replace my zma’s practicality and ease of use. Santoosh felt the bull pangs :P Off he went with the bull, while we tried to take few “bull riding” shots of his :P



He had another point of view, that of vibes! Well bull and vibes are part of it’s character, but he seemed to have hard time accepting it :P Next it was professor’s turn to take the bull for a spin! Bull’s seating was higher than professor’s unicorn, so it was difficult for professor to keep his foot on ground. After the initial discomfort, professor took off with the bull roaring while we took a few pics of professor with bull :P



Professor was excited about bull’s different feel, but the practical problem of seating height made his reconsider bull as his next choice. Even we felt that it would be difficult for professor to manage a bike with high seating height. We all suggest professor to try out Avenger 200. It was time to move. Balaji wanted few orkut profile snaps, so we obliged :P It was already 8.30 Am and we were feeling hunger pangs, so we moved from there towards Kaivara. We reached Kaivara by 9 Am and found a local hotel there. Had tasty Dosa, lemon rice, bondas and all munchable stuff. We decided to hit a park cum zoo in the outskirts there. The Zoo is maintained by forest department and has monuments galore. Ranging from 9 planets to astrological signs to gods to even streets named after seasons! Few Monuments had old poetry written on them.



After walking for a while, we found few interesting monkeys under a tree and Balaji was trying to get a close up pic of the primate :P



Then we found a Crocodile resting in it’s enclosure followed by a peacock enclosure.



Later we found couple of wolves in their enclosure, it was difficult to get a good pic of these fellows as they were restless and running all around.



Next up was porcupine! I had never seen one, it was difficult initially to see it as I mistook it for shade and broom :P and also make out whether I was clicking it’s ass or face :P both looked the same :P thankfully the fellow was eating and I could click!



Next up was a huge open enclosure for deers. I had only seen two variety of deers during my outing to kerala and bandipur. Those were spotted deer and sambar deer. Here, there were close to 5 different species.



One young deer was very friendly and Balaji was feeding grass to it through the fence.



After that we saw few Cobras coiled up in their enclosure. The python was not to be seen at it’s enclose so dropped by a lazy bear in it’s enclosure.



We had completed one huge round of the zoo and it was time to move on to kailashagiri. After a cool drinks break at a shop near by, we moved on. The approach road towards kailashagiri was mini ghat road, it was fun taking corners. Soon we approached the entrance. We had to park the bikes and walk for a km or so. We dumped our stuff at a near by temple office and we climbed the steps towards the cave temple. Kailashagiri is a series of temples inside a monolith cave. The huge rock has been carved out using some high tech equipments. I forgot how many years they took to drill such a huge hole inside the monolith rock! But the entrance was deceptive, once inside the carved out space was as big as a huge hall!



Work is still in progress in cave and they are still digging and drilling. The completed portions are open for public. We came out after the visit and rested for a while, the scenery outside was good too.



We moved on and on our way down from there, found a small dam. We parked for a while there, but had to move on as there was no shade. We hit chintamani main road after sometime and hit a dhaba for lunch. After heavy lunch and chat sessions, we moved on towards Unisey thopu or tamarind groove. Professor was telling that the trees were very old, prolly some centuries together. Before moving out after lunch, I swapped my zma with Balaji for his bull. It was fun riding a bull for close to 30 kms. The riding posture, feel etc were exact opposite of my zma.

We stopped midway to enquire routes, this time santoosh wanted to try the bull, so I hopped on to his torquey pulsar. I was surprised seeing the direction boards pointing to devanahalli as it led towards the new international airport. It turned out that this tamarind groove is situated near the new airport! We found the first of trees by the road side and went in for snaps.



The trees were huge and old, but had strange formations. Each had number stapled on them. We moved on and we towards the number 1 tree, it is the oldest of the lot there. We parked the bikes underneath the tree.



Few trees were dying out due to old age, but their offsprings were hale and healthy. I was glad that atleast this part of greenery escaped from the airport work. The scenery was good, calm and cool with birds chirping, interrupted frequently by planes taking off or landing.



After whiling time there, it was time to move on. While Santoosh and me felt that going via new airport highway would be nearer, Balaji and professor had to go via KR Puram hanging bridge. After a final tea break, we parted ways. Santoosh wanted to check out the new Airport, so he ventured towards airport while I headed home and reached by 6 pm. Over all it was a short sweet weekend ride. Thanks to professor for this discovery!

50000 kms in 3.3 years!

It had to happen :P I was on my way to office today on my Zma, nearing whitefield, my moment of joy flashed on the speedo console, the reading was 50000 kms in odo meter. It was time for Kodak moment :P so pulled over to the side and clicked the momento picture on my phone camera.



It’s been 3 years and 3 months since I became a tourer, Zma transformed me from a city commuter on a splendor to a tourer. I still remember the day when me and good friend of mine had gone to Prakash motors during lunch break on a week day straight from office to book and choose my zma from the lot :P there were 3 Silver Zmas, I didn’t start or even touch any of those, just saw the three of them and chose mine, I had this gut feeling that this bike is the one among the lot :P Haven’t regretted till date, won’t regret in future either.

Googling for Zma’s feed back introduced me to biking groups like Xbhp and touring group BikeNomads. I made many friends over all these years through these two groups and met interesting people. I opened a new chapter of touring after I bought zma, she has taken me through various places, places I had earlier seen on map or seen only through Tv :P She gave me freedom to fly on two wheels to any destination that earlier were “so far” :P I honed my riding skills on zma over a period of time and she was very forgiving whenever I erred, never ever let me down even in the worst of the scenarios.

Even when I crashed for the first time in Kemmangundi’s horrible roads, she took all the brunt and spared me the injuries. At the same time, she didn’t get crippled, after minor repairs at a local service center there for 1 hour, she was ready to be ridden back with a pillion and cramster saddle bags to boot! Sachin was belting her at 90 – 100 kmph on the way back from crash, still she didn’t make a fuss out of it. Gave her a complete make over after reaching Bangalore and now she’s as good as a new bike. Didn’t mind that getting her back to old self after the crash drained me financially, It was my way of saying thanks to the trusty old battle scarred war horse.



Each Km of the 50k kms have been bliss so far, she’s been an excellent commuter in city for my office – home commutes so far in my earlier office and a reliable tourer machine in all my rides out of town. I will be getting a Cab now on for my daily office commutes in new office, so she’s going to be spared of horrible city commutes, which she had to bear the brunt of all these years. Now on she’s gonna much kms only on highways majorly. Over a period I did pamper her with usual spares that get worn out, after the crash, I got a entire new set of “clothes” :P new set of tyres, 55/60w headlamp bulb and recently added a custom made crashguard to save her costly “clothes” :P from damage. Am planning to gift her twin horns soon and a HID later.

I can sum up by saying that Zma’s an excellent machine which is an excellent commuter and tourer if ridden and maintained properly. It does have it’s own share of flaws like flimsy plastic panels, astronomically priced spares, shortage of spares etc, but I guess all logic fails when I see the pics from all my rides and imagine the fun I had in each of those rides! Those moments are priceless!

An Encounter with a Cheetah!

Nah, not of the four legged variety, but a two wheeled one :P Iam talking about the Patrol bikes of Police in Bangalore, they are called Cheetah and are also painted like cheetah. Well, I didn’t get on the wrong side of the law or any such thing, I just happened to get a closer look on one of the police Cheetahs today.

Me and my friend Girish (he’s a cop) were on our way to Whitefield, I wanted to do trial runs from home to Whitefield as my new office is situated there :P Wanted to get familiarized with the Potholes, road humps, danger zones etc from a biker’s point of view, which will facilitate me in getting in to “auto pilot” mode during my future home – office commutes (for few days till iam provided a cab) I wouldn’t want to be happily cruising in my comfort speed and spot an unexpected pothole or road hump at the last moment, I wanted the same kind of comfort level that I had for 5.5 years while commuting through Hosur Road to my earlier office. (Yeah, iam psychotic :P )

This was my second venture towards that route, I was getting familiarized with the N number of Road humps in Whitefield, made a mental note of those and was returning back home, when girish spotted one of his colleague on the Cheetah Patrol bike of Whitefield Police station. I stopped the bike and both the cop friends started talking. My attention turned towards this “mama” bike :P I had an excellent opportunity to get a deeper look at the various gizmos attached to it, so I started clicking few pics with my Phone Camera.



Then Girish’s Cop friend told me that I could take close up pics of the gizmos if I wanted to! So, I started clicking. The bike was of newer batch, it was a Pulsar 150 V3 (digital meter one) The standard fittings were the noticeable side box (to carry papers and the dreaded Fine book! :P) The two prominent Siren lights, a loud speaker, an amplifier for the sirens (with various modes in it) and a walkie talkie holder. The lathi is kept between the gap of sidebox, seat and footpeg.
I got curious as to how all these devices were mounted and started to take a closer look.



The Siren lights (2) are mounted on to a Bull bar type Crash guard on each side. The loudspeaker is connected is held by a small nut on the Starter motor! The Amplifier and Walkie talkie stand are made of metal and are fixed crudely between two rear view mirror mounting nuts! But they do their job though. The Amp is pretty heavy, but it sits steadily in this jugaad. The Amplifier is for the Siren Lights, the Amplifier has Volume control for the siren sound, different type of siren modes eg, Ambulance, fire, police! There’s even a microphone input for cops to plugin a microphone for announcements!



I was thinking that all these devices would have some additional battery as power source, I was surprised when the Cop told me that they all run on Pulsar’s stock 9 amps battery! I asked him then how does it handle the load, he told me that if they use the sirens a lot, then the battery goes kaput in a month or two and then they need to replace it! The cop also told that’s why they don’t use those sirens or speaker that much as it ends up killing the battery! I guess that’s why these devices are always a show piece in traffic as well as crime police vehicles.

I guess it’s the same story with older police bikes like the bullets. The cop also told me that now they are issuing Pulsar 180s and Apache 150s to crime as well as traffic departments. The day is not far when we are doing 80 -100 kmph in Ring road and we get pulled over by a traffic cop on a white Pulsar 200/220 for overspeeding!

It was time to move on, so i thanked the cop for letting me take the pics and patiently answering my queries and we both moved on towards home. Thanks to my friend Girish, I got a closer look at the cheetah from a biker’s point of view. Will try to get a closer view of police four wheeler Hoysala next time if I get a chance, but with out getting into it! :P

Lazy Weekend ride with Professor

This was supposed to be a CCD meet and ended up being a srirangapatna meet :P Weekend was approaching, called professor to see if we could meet up to discuss future ride prospects, while I proposed a meet in our usual ccd on Sunday, professor had a ride plan in mind, Srirangapatna is famous for it’s heritage and equally famous for it’s non-veg Military hotels! Professor suggested that we start the lazy ride on Sunday morning by 7.30 Am, move towards Mandya, from there take deviation towards temple town Melukote and from there hit Srirangapatna. Have lunch there at a famous military hotel and return back to Bangalore with a pit stop in Maddur CCD.

Plan sounded too tempting and I gave in, so the last minute ride was decided on Saturday! Last minute sms sent to riders predictably evinced zero interest as most of the guys had already planned up events for their Sundays. But Praveen T responded that he would join us half way through have breakfast in maddur and head back to Bangalore as he had some work. So it just 3 of us who were going to be in this ride and 2 riders were going to complete the ride, looked like the trend of riders breaking off midway in the ride was gonna continue from my earlier ride :P

Riders and Bikes:

1. Professor - Unicorn
2. Vasanth – Karizma
3. Praveen T – Unicorn

Route:
Bangalore>Maddur>Mandya>Melukote>Srirangapatna>Maddur>Bangalore

Pics:
My Pics: Click here

Ride Log:

I reached the meeting point bang on time, Praveen T informed me that he was at NICE road junction, so I headed there after smsing professor about the change of meeting point. Praveen is moving out of Bangalore the coming week :( as he got placed in IIM Ahmedabad :) Bangalore BN is loosing out on of it’s best tourers :( So we got talking and looked at the watch, it was 8 and no sign of professor! Turned out that professor was not carrying his cell and he was waiting at the old meet up point for us! Finally professor called me from a local landline and got the message. Soon he met up with us and wasting no more time, we moved on towards maddur.

Mysore road is always challenging, it’s a tricky road, it’s tempts you to throw all caution to the wind and twist your right wrist, but this curvy 4 laned road is where most of the people loose their sense of limit and push themselves and their vehicles to limits and shit happens sometimes. The initial josh of getting out of city’s chockablock traffic settles down with in 10 kms of hitting this road for me and I get back to my cautious riding self, at the same time it’s a pleasure to cruise in constant 90-100 kmph on butter smooth curvy road on a zma.

We hit maddur Tiffany’s by 9 Am and settled down for our much deserved breakfast. Savoured tasty dosas, maddur vadas and idlies. We were discussing praveen’s shift of base from Bangalore to Ahmedabad, also we were reliving some memorable rides that he was part of us with us here. Ah, Nostaligia :(

It was time for Praveen to split up, he bid byes to us and headed towards Bangalore while professor and me headed towards mandya. From mandya, professor lead and took me through the deviation road towards Melukote. The road was is in ok condition, sparse traffic and compensated with beautiful views of sugarcane fields (Mandya is Sugarcane town) We cruised merrily and stopped over near a field for a butt break, I got clicking while professor was trying to adjust the air fuel mixture screw of his unicorn.




After a long sutta/butt break, we decided to move and headed towards melukote. On the way after some time, we found a good scenic stretch of road, so I stopped to click pics. Professor was not happy with unicorn’s Air fuel mixture screw and again went about trying to get back a proper feel.



After 5 mins, Professor gave up and decided that he would get the setting done on the way by some mech, I couldn’t lend a hand coz I myself am novice when it comes to carbs. Something’s are best left untouched I guess! We hit temple town Melukote by 12Pm, on the way towards temple, there’s a short twisty ghat section, which is fun, especially some 3 curves are pure bliss to corner on. We moved on and parked our bikes near the temple. We felt that carry our riding gear+lids+tankbags in to the temple for a Darshan wasn’t the best idea after all! So we quickly clicked some pics. I had been to melukote earlier by cage, so I was satisfied with few pics of temple from outside.



Did some experiments with the reflection on visor of my lid :P

We moved after few snaps, on the way down, there was a huge lake by roadside, but the entrance towards the lake was some what camouflaged, we made our way through and got an ideal spot for relaxing on a hot sunny day. While I went about relaxing and clicking few pics of zma and surroundings, professor went towards a mech shop that he had spotted on the way to get his unicorn’s carb tuned properly.



After sometime professor returned and seemed to be happy with the mech’s work on carb. I again experimented with the lake’s reflection on visor of my lid :P



After that it was just chit chat on all sundry things, couple of fags followed. It was getting hot and hunger pans started, so we decided to move towards srirangapatna for lunch and packed out from there by 1 pm. The road from melukote to srirangapatna is one of the best State highways, with clean wide tarmac with road markings etc. We hit srirangapatna in no time and Professor towards the famed military hotel. It was a really old place, definitely not for the typicial urban IT Crowd, but for localites who savour the taste. I was delighted at being at such a nostalgic place. After indulging in the speciality meals and loads of gup shup, we saw the time was already 4 pm! We scooted towards Bangalore, thinking of a pit stop in between in maddur CCD. We hit Maddur CCD by 4.45 Pm and cooled down with a mocha drink.



It was a perfect lazy Sunday ride for me! After some time pass there, few fags later we moved on towards Bangalore. I hit home by 7pm, thanks to crawling city traffic in mysore road. Not a ride to boast about kms done in a day or to boast about being through scenic places or capturing scenic pics, it was a lazy ride which recharged my batteries, especially now that I was a bit low coz Iam jobless for next few days till I join my new company!

There is nothing that a Motorcycle ride can’t cure! :P