avinrichards

Its 4:45 am on 12th July.

I reach Right in front of St Johns Hospital. Yes, i am early the meet up is at 5 am . I search for a tea shop , Nothing in sight. take a spin around madiwala and help myself to a tea and head on back to St John's .
I reach there and wait another 5 mins and tanay arrives on his steed the naked beauty a P200 black. His first G2G. ( and he got a lot more action than he wanted ).
We get introduced , and then comes along archi on his mix and matched red/black R15. yup it definitely is a looker. We chit chat and wait for the other confirmed riders. Saj, praful, and maverik. I call up saj and he is just starting from home. Archi calls up maverik .The phone just keeps ringing.
(no waking him up after his movie marathon). and we assumed the same for praful aswell .
Saj arrives and after getting ourselves aqquainted with eachother. we decide to move.
Destination Shoolagiri mountains and the DAM close by.

So the final set of riders.

Tanay



Saj



Archi



and me. (well you dont get much of your own snaps when you are the one behind the camera.)

5:30 am.We head on via Silkboard on to the highway and head on with a healthy of about 70-90 kmph.
Archi leading. Saj second . Third Tanay and me trailing.

At those speeds a distance of about 60km was never going to be far.
About 45 mins into the journey hardly about 15 odd kms from Shoolagiri we decide to take a short break.( NO Fatigue NO pee Just for the heck of it ).
We halt over and just chit chat and see a guy ripping the heart out of a 100cc on the beautiful highway. Dont remember which vehicle but what we remember is seeing something flying away. yessss.. it was his lid (atleast we thought it was). we see it roll all over the road. The guy never bothers to stop and just carries on. Saj goes to take it from the road and comes back with a big smile ! and what do you know .
The guys helmet was just the thermocol that is kept inside of helmets.





after a good laugh we hop back on and hed on to find our mountain.

we take the road to Shoolagiri a left deviation from the highway.
We head on to right to the foothills of the mountain and find it not motorable nor trek-able. well..we sure were at the wrong place, and we thought there would be another approach road to it.
We head on and decided we would find the dam and relax near the water.

Thanks to a lot of locals who helped us with a lot of misdirections . we ended up taking a long detour through the middle of nowhere on this amazing road which was just made.
Again the dam hunt began. left here .. right there ..keep going straight. a different version from every person we asked ..man we were really frustrated.
To top it all ..the road ,even though new was really skidding ..except for archi on th R15 all of us were heaving problems .
I survived a skid on a corner and kept it in balance. and then tanay had a small skid due to a stone on the road. We stop again for a small break for a group discussion . Click some snaps of the mountain in background.


Here ^^ you can see tanay trying to find out with his phone's GPS where the hell we were.





Some shadow photography and more discussions later (which involved who gets to eat the last Goodday biscuit) we hop back on and continue.
Then i saw a set of transmission power lines . The ones which are usually associated with very high voltage. and pop in the idea of following it to the dam . we follow it. soon we reach a T junction and again try with the locals for directions and they tell us there is no such thing nearby.
We see a good road heading down and the locals tells us that it leads to krishnagri.
Whatever ! and we just decide atleast we will make a small trip out of it and head on down on it only to discover this amazing road with beautiful surroundings .
This same road had some nice corners a sweet hairpin through the jungle , up a mountain and then through the plains with greenery all around.

As soon as we hit the plains again we stop. this was turning out to be one hell of a trip nearly 100kms on the odo now and middle of nowhere we were quite happy to be LOST.








we continue on the beautiful roads . at this point i was a little scared about the skidding and was not goin on full throttle and saj constantly had to slow down for me while the rest of the gang was far ahead.

Soon after passing through couple of small towns and picturesque roads which had trees on bothsides as an umbrella it was a beautiful place to be on road.

Soon we arrive at krishnagiri and archi tells us about a hotel.
We park of bikes out front and head on inside to have some really amazing idilis and vada's. The Food was really good . and i sure would recommend it to any body.




Its about 9:10 and still not having found the dam we decide we will definitely find it now and start back.
We cross the toll . Archi has gone way ahead and i was leading the pack maintaining a speed of about 80-90kmph on the NH7.

This point on.. the entire story has been quite a learning lesson for me. and as explained by the guys here here and here. Things could have been worse. Yes there are some things that i need to get off my back. One thing that i did realize is that everybody has priorities and nobody really cares about the truth. My advice to anybody who might share a similar faith as me. Do whatever it is that you have to get out of the place. LIE ACT whatever. All people want is money and are truly heartless at getting it.

i owe a lot to archie ,saj and tanay and thank then from the bottom of my heart ,who, even though having other important priorites stayed with me for as long as they could to help me through my tough time.
Also specially to tanay and saj who stayed on till the very end and helped me back on the saddle and trailed me with a lot of patience.

God knows how i rode the 80 odd kms back . I guess the pain killers injected at the hospital kept me goin.

Hope to be back riding soon enough.
And most importantly I NEED TO FIND THAT DAMN DAM..!!

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ken cool

Tour Report Approved

Thanks for sharing. Yes, a skid here and a skid there can actually scare our bottoms. The moment the feedback from the tyres stops, we try to clutch at straws! So where the hell is the dam? Sorry to hear about that incident about the drunk fella. Interestingly logged tour report.

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The Wheel was a great invention; Two Wheels with a Motor in between was even better!


BMW Motorrad Days 2011

Xbhp's Indo-French Kashmir-Ladakh Tour

tanay

Next time we go for the dam I will be fully prepared with google earth printouts etc.
And i would not mind some more idlis+vadas as well.

nabendubasu

sorry to hear that avin hope you get well soon.
tanay i think you should have find the place with your phones gps.

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NABENDU BASU

Nio

Damn!!! Sorry to hear that the dam ride became a damn ride for you Avin.. Get well soon dude and ride more to post more travelogues
Also appreciate the efforts of Archi, Tanay and Saj to help your co-rider... Good going X-Bhpian's..

avinrichards

Thanks ken.

The dam ? well.. thanks to all the misdirections we went a complete circle around it. and we did not even know.

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shadez

if you had asked me! turn right from third flyover after krishnagiri toll...

get well soon mate... lets ride!

avinrichards

i'm on.. let me get my ride resurrected..

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shadez

^ yeah. we should have the damn dam GTG ride sometime. it always helps to ride high at the places we fall. builds back loads of confidence. right?

btw... didnt follow kadamba thread sorry. what all and how much spent on bike?

saj

@ avin: dude i hope you get back on the saddle very very soon... cant wait for that damn dam!!!

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