waiting for updates on your latest ventures with Ashley...
btw,you have had a good enough time riding the Iron..hows the comfort level?

booked iron on ganesh chaturthi. They promised me to deliver in 4 to 5 months. bought pillion seat, engine guard and security system. The owner of Mumbai HD showroom informed me mumbai is no.1 in sells, behind is delhi.
i m desperately waiting for your next update on kanyakumari trip.

^^^ Congrats on your booking. Try to go for Sundowner Deepbucket instead of pillion seat. Its a huge difference in comfort. Kanyakumari log should be here soon...

I recently Fell in Love with the Iron 883 and its Killer...

Congrats on the bike and Descriptions are crisp and to the point.

So how much does it give on highway...

Do you use for daily commute???

how did u manage yourself from booking time to delivery????? i cant wait . too desp....

Sir firstly a very big congrats for your ashely(iron 883) its my favorite one from HD stable... You mentioned that you did a ride to kanyakumari, did u ride with a company of 2 Harleys along with you?
Because, I spotted 3 Harleys on NH7 near Tirunelveli one was black other was a blue and i am not sure about the color of the third one.
I was awestruck when i saw harleys on the road...
Have a great going sir

Ride to Kanyakumari

The plan started off during a rock show event and during casual discussions and idea about Kanyakumari, to the southern tip of India. The dates were finalized in the spot and here we kick off.

My preparations for the ride started weeks before and started making my checklist. Here it goes:

Tank Bag
Water Bottle
Empty Bottle for 1L petrol
Snickers 6 nos
Red Bull 3 nos
Back Pack
T-Shirts 2 nos
Jeans 1 no
Raingear, Jacket & Gloves
Deo, Soap, Paste & Brush
Small Torch
Small Knife
Puncher Repair Kit
Syn Oil 1L
Camera (charge previous day)
Full Tank (on previous day)
Cash 5000 (withdraw previous day)

It was my first such ride for long duration (not so long... :-)) and hence bought new Saddlebags and Tankbag to carry the luggage. The Cramster Stallion saddlebags just fitted perfectly without any issues on my sundowner deepbucket seat. I was more interested to buy RJays Tank Bag, but Orion didn't have stock. So, went ahead with Turtle Bag.

Meanwhile, I got engine guard fitted to bike and also got highway mounts. This was the best part of the ride, as I enjoyed stretching the legs on the straight NH7.

Day 1: 22nd July 2011

It was a short night with sleep for just 4 hours. Slept at 00:30 am and woke up at 4:30 am. I was all set to go at around 5:00 am. I was the first to reach the meeting point and we were all set to rock on NH7 at 6:00 am.

We stopped for an early breakfast at Krishna Cafe (+McD+CCD) near Shoolagiri. Had some nice Idli Vada. The vada was so delicious and crunchy that we ordered one more round of them. We filled up gas en-route and the long journey on straight NH7 was to its full steam. Soon we crossed Dharmapuri and reached Salem. Enjoyed the twisties before salem, but the road was humpy and bumpy. There was some traffic and it was hot too. I filled up at Salem and had snickers and redbull. Reached Karur by around 11:00 am. Filled up again on highway and journey continued.

We were cruising at decent speeds and stopped at around 12:30 pm for lunch at BP Ghar Dhaba on right lane before Madurai. The place was neat and food was good.

After lunch, it was a long journey towards Kanyakumari as we by-passed Madurai. Filled up again around 100 kms before Kanyakumari and continued. Lot of cross-winds and we soon started to see 10s of windmills around. As we continued, the number growed to 100s and at some point we stopped with around more than 1000 windmills around. Yes, they were more than 1000. We stopped for a bit longer time to capture some nice snaps.

Since we were hoping to reach before sunset, we hurried the last stretch to make sure to catch the sun. We reached hotel at 5:30 pm and dumped our luggage into a cottage. We had booked Hotel Tamil Nadu (TTDC) over internet. The hotel is in excellent location and were glad to book it. We could see the Sea, Thiruvallur Statue and Vivekananda Memorial right from our room.

The surprise was the peacocks. We saw around 10 of them within the Hotel compound. I would strongly recommend to stay here (stay only, I will come to rest of it).

We then hurried to View Tower, which is also just in front of our Hotel. To our bad luck, clouds had spoiled our plans to view the sunset. We hang around in the View Tower for some time and had a stunning view of Rock Memorial and Statue lit with lights.

Without wasting any more time, we briskly walked towards the Rock Memorial. Thanks to saddlebags which can carry lot of stuff, I had my tripod handy to capture few beautiful night shots. We spent quite some time there and left to hotel to have our dinner.

I had mentioned early that the hotel is good. But, it is not 100% as the bar was pathetic. I din't mind much as it was not a problem to sip some coke. But was not happy to see our dear ones gulping Zingaroo without any other option. The food was also average. To compensate this, we decided to have ice cream and we were hunting for ice cream at Kanyakumari at night. We came to know that there was an icecream shop near Police station and we headed towards there. We lost the way and here is a conversation with a local which we cannot forget for lifetime:

We: Police Station enga irruku? (where is the police station?)
Him: kdjs ldk fnvksls mdf dkkd
We: ???
Him: Edakke, enna vendum? (Why, what do you want?)
We: Ice cream Vendum (We wanted ice cream)
Him: ?!?! (Staring at us thinking that we expected ice cream from police station!)
We: Terima (Do you know?)
Him: Grr, dlkjs lkd slk (he showed the way)

We reached Baskins Robbins, but had only some mint flavor. Doesn't matter and we took parcel to have in hotel. After finishing the icecream we slept soon with agreement to get up early to catch the sunrise. We also thought of visiting Madurai temple and possibly re-aligning the trip schedule to accommodate it.

Day 2: 23rd July 2011

It was 5:15 am and my alarm rang. I started to get ready. The previous night's Zingaro had taken a toll and my fellow riders were not in very good shape. It was tough to get ready and we somehow managed to reach the sunrise spot by 6:00 am. Though it was walkable distance, we preferred to wake up Kanyakumari with the screaming eagles. The sunrise spot was crowded with hundreds of people and very little space to walk.

Clicked lots of photos to capture the sequence of sunrise and I loved it. It was not a perfect sunrise, but was good enough to make my shutter happy.

We then had a detailed photoshoot of the bikes and in parallel to answering the same questions again and again. The only difference was that the questions were in Tamil and answers were in Tamykannada.

We got back to hotel and finalized Madurai Plans. We went ahead to book a TTDC hotel in Madurai for the 23rd night. We decided to have breakfast outside hotel and went to Saravana, which was another disaster. It was the worst Pongal I ever had in my life.

During our photo shoot, we had seen a Ayurvedic centre and possible a massage option. We thought of checking it out and bingo. Massage as available and all the three had one of the best massage. It was relaxing and all strain from previous day ride just vanished. The steam bath was cherry on top. Now, we were all set to visit the Memorial.

It was around 1:00 pm and we didn't have long queue to reached the rock memorial. We took lots of photos at the memorial and did some shopping too. The return from memorial was a long wait as the queue was big. We came back and everyone agreed to try out a Punjabi Resturant. We entered Sree Punjabi Resturant, opposite to Baskin Robbins and had mouth watering Paneer with Dal Makhani and Channa Masala. Food here was very good and enjoyed every bite. Would recommend to visit this and you would love it.

After lunch, we started packing for our journey towards Madurai. Straight roads and feeling very good after the massage, we soon reached a CCD around 70 kms before Madurai. I sipped my cold sparkle and felt refreshing. We continued and soon entered outskirts of Madurai. Since none of us knew good Tamil, I asked for directions towards Koel (temple). Some lady directed us towards some other Koel around 7 kms before the real Meenakshi Koel. We were happy to speak with a person in English and felt comfortable. We took directions from him and entered Madurai during peak traffic. After some chaos with one-ways (yes, one-way in Madurai...), we finally reached the TTDC hotel. It was a decent hotel and good staff. Its just around 100m from Bus Stand and around 1Km from Temple. Had a brief chat with the hotel manager and decided to visit the temple immediately. Took a rick (40 bugs for 1 km) and reached the temple.

We were thinking that there might be long queue and tried to get 100 rupee quick darshan. We met a security guard who allowed us to go very near to the Shiv Ling and we had a powerful darshan for almost 10 mins. It was too good. Then we had darshan of Meenakshi with the help of a guide and then he showed us the sacred well (was dry) and marriage hall made from teak wood. We were not able to visit 1000 pillar mantap as it was closed. Had a quick glance from outside and it was marvellous piece of work on stone. A must for next visit to Madurai.

Food was not an issue in Madurai. We had the famous Kothu Paratha and I also tried out Pongal. Both were good. Came back to Hotel and that was the end of Day 2.

Day 3: 24th June 2011

We wanted to start very early, but ended up starting at 7:00 am. We filled up our tanks and soon hit the highway. We then stopped at the same Ghar Dhaba and had good breakfast. Filled up the tanks and continued at decent speeds. Soon we reached Salem and again filled up the tanks. Our target was to reach the same Krishna Inn in Shoolagiri for lunch. After a non-stop ride we reached at around 1:00 pm. I decided to skip lunch and had Samosa with Cool Blue at the CCD. We settled our finances and thanked each other for such a nice ride together. The stretch between Salem and Shoolagiri was with lot of bugs and my Windscreen was full of dead bugs.

We started our last leg of the trip back to Bangalore. I started feeling drousy in between. Looks like Cool Blue had some effect. This is the second time I felt that way after having Cool Blue. I should never have Cool Blue while riding. We finally reached the EC Toll booth and said bye to each other.

Reached home at around 2:30 pm and the ride of 1385 Kms came to an end.

Overall, it was a nice ride with lot of memories to carry forward. Thanks to Jitu and Sumanth for riding along and being a wonderful company.

In the entire trip, the bike was very comfortable. Very little strain to body parts and was able to carry lots of luggage in the saddle bags. Overall, I am happy to carry so many memories forward.

Here are some pics:

Mouthwatering trip log.
Great pictures man.
Ride safe.

Should definitely be our gang

Thank you

I was never a Harley Fan... Well I was never a Bike enthusiast Until few months ago...

Now I have developed some Interest and Iron 883 is my Dream Bike waiting the day to come when i own one of these...

Great to see some pics of my place kanyakumari...

Cheers sri.... This is the first thread am subscribing keep updating

hi srisetty,
great story(though a short one) n great snaps too. i like dsc_2258 pic. i immd stored it in my harddisk.
whts the cost of saddlebags... with those ur bike was looking ausomeeeeeee.

That's nice sir I saw your gang some 83 kms before Kanyakumari...
And BTW,What is the name of other two HD motorcycles?

Amazing Trip Log Sir!! LOVED it!!

Also nice conversation you had with that local (resembled a typical vadivelu situation )


The Blue one is a standard sportster and the one with the mirrors below the handlebars is a sportster 48

Thanks FI

hi sri,
whts up. any new long/short ride???
u write amazingly good.
i read the whole story atleast 5 times now.
today i have been to bijapur on my pulsar 150 (100kms to n fro). This Nh13 patch from solapur to bijapur is approved for 4/6 lane. but the project is still in pipleline. the road is pathetic, full of traffic.
while riding pulsar i was fantasizing ,how @ iron on this road... no no not on this road... on nh 9 pune road(which 6 lane work is @ to finish), like that.
anyways post some more snaps sri.


i just got up n editing this thread cuz i got your video riding iron.