Suddenly out of the blue I hear that painful sound of two broken metal parts rubbing against each other , and the bike just stopped … Right there in the middle of the ghats , and no one was around , just me and my friend , Checked it to see the chain hanging out and I immediately knew the problem , the sprocket holder nut has come off and so the sprocket has fallen out and the chain is hanging loose … can’t even push the bike because the chain is getting jammed as well , my toolkit was in my bag and the bag was in the car and the car was gone by now …

my friend waved a few cars to ask for help and not one stopped , finally the one that stopped had no toolkit … Finally a group of bikers passed by and thankfully , they stopped , they were coming from Trichur , Kerala . And the guy that stopped had a P200 with the R15 Fairing and projector angel eye setup … Luckily he had his toolkit and when we opened the front sprocket cover , well , there was no sprocket there … this confirmed what I thought and I went around looking for the sprocket , finally found it a few metres away , by now a few more bikers stopped and they went in search of the sprocket holder … The guys were extremely helpful and If not for them I wouldn’t know where I would have gone . So a few minutes later they found the sprocket holder as well and I really cannot explain the relief that I felt . Looked around for a replacement bolt to fit in there … After a lot of search we removed the bolt holding the rear number plate and fixed it in … Desi jugaad .

Carefully made my way down in the rain . AGAIN !!! and met up with the car , decided to find a mechanic , found one guy in a dingy alley , took a few attempts to explain my problem , he saw it and he just hand turned the screw out of it’s socket , we had used a screw driver and tightened it as hard as we could . He used a regular screw and fit that in , and whew ! I was back on my way … Through all this hungama I didn’t notice the time and it was close to 2pm … God I don’t know where the time went , I was feeling so relieved that I didn’t feel any hunger , so now we had no plan of going anywhere , and my friend had to wait for his girl to show up … we waited and waited and waited some more … I got agitated and once again left him alone to bring my bike back to the guest house after he was done with his meet . went there and did the usual time pass watching TV . The friend showed up by 5 with my lunch … A large cheese burst pizza .

Any more planning was neigh impossible as the rain began to come down heavy as usual ...

let me ask did you put the thread locker now

The SVC has no idea what it is ... They just checked the bolt , checked the torque and said it's safe to run , local mech also said the same , so I haven't put it yet .

very good log .. i was laughing after reading some sentences . Waiting for some scenic pics... i too njoyed the twists of 36 hair pin... except innova no other vehicle can be compared to two wheeler on this stretch.. all will be smoked out..

Thanks bro ... ,I saw your trip log and it was really cool , your pics are fab and i noticed the weather seemed mostly sunny ... my pics are few because of the time we did this trip , the rain was crazy . , but day 4 has the scenery coming up ...

Day 4 : Ooty - Coonoor - Kotagiri - Ooty ( more than 100 kms of twisties )

Woke up by 7 AM and was raring to go , but first we had a few things we needed , anticiapting more rain we decided to go and find some of those plastic pull on type of raincoat ... to use over whatever little gear we had . And to add to that my buddy had some other commitments of his own ( read girl "friend" ) , so we went on a hunt through the market for the raincoat but to our utter dismay it was nowhere to be found ... we returned to the bus stop by about 9:30 am to find her already waiting there , I said my hi -bye's as they planned to head out to Pykara and I was going in the opposite direction . After re-assuring her that my friend could indeed ride the RE 350 classic and she in turn promised to bring him back safely home ... I made my way out to coonoor ... it was 9:45am ... The best journey had just started ... It was gloomy for the first 5kms odd and I was alone with just my thoughts for company and I kind of drifted back to the day when the doc told me that I couldn't ride a bike again , the time frame was indefinite ... those were the worst few days for me , spoke to a few mwmbers here who had suffered worse problems than mine and who encouraged me to keep riding ... So from there to here on a bike all by myself on the hills ... my spirits lifted and so did the weather ... It was just bright sunshine all the way ... the Roads were supremely beautiful and once again i didn't have pics as my camera was in the car ( as I was anticipating even more rain ) which had left us more than an hour back .. Cursing myself for this stupidity I rode on to coonoor ... About 3km from Coonoor I saw a diversion which said Sim's park 6km ... Called up my people to find our their location and yes it was Sim's park ... Took the left and going through the Army base was another superb experience ... this is where I saw something for the first time , the roads were made of the small cement blocks which are used for the footpaths ... I had a very uneasy feeling since the start of the day that I was going to fall today so I took it easy as I didn't know what sort of grip that surface offers ... Soon after I was at Sim's Park , Bought a ticket went in and hey ! the family decided it was time to go , they were there for the past hour , but still I managed a quick couple of pics . I know it's not great ,

Entry to Sim's park


Loved the colour combo


From here It was decided that we head on to Lamb's rock ... More twisties , This was by far the best route i've ever taken . A single lane road that leads through the dense vegetation with the clouds for company , the visibilty was about a few metres ... Really amazing , I think this would be the best time to do this particular ride , just to get that superb feeling ... some pics on the way ...











The mist killing the visibility


Staring into the Unknown


Clouds clearing up to reveal the vista

Another half an hour later we were at dolphin's nose ... And yeah we we're greeted by more mist and cloud , everytime we came back it cleared out and before we could run back to the view point it got cloudy again ... grrrrr ... so I just sat around waiting and yay I spotted a waterfall ... after a few attempts ...

hide and seek


now u see it


And after this was done with the next stop for the day ,Kotagiri and catherene falls ... But before that it was lunchtime , made our way back into coonoor town to find a place for lunch ... Made do with the first decent looking restaurant that we found and then started out immediately ... And just like clockwork , Mr.rain god decided to show up ... but not with all his might , so it was quite a nice ride down to kotagiri ... It was about 19km of plains and twisties , simply beautiful and wide roads and some amazing vista's on the way





cloud peeking out from behind the hills


and a Ganesha procession blocked our route , the cops showed us a detour and we took that and it was one steep incline to counter , The bike made it with obvious ease but cars , well not so lucky ... Reached Kotagiri and asked around for catherene falls , Yeah the same one which was visible from the dolphin's nose ... the route we were sent on didn't look like leading anywhere near a waterfall , but yet we continued on ... I was leading the car through here , Absolutely no traffic whatsoever , It was just a single lane road down to the falls ... Stopped for some pics

the route






and after more than an hour and a half of a ride down we reached the falls ... had a small walk through a tea plantation to actually reach the view point and we were like WTF !!! the viewpoint is at completely the wrong angle , the view from the dolphin's nose was better than this ... but it was a really secluded spot , and there was just one another firangi family from morocco who had come there ... after just hanging around there for sometime , we decided to head back to Ooty ...

Spot the waterfalls folks


But a beautiful view too nonetheless


the climb back up with clouds for company




And about 20km from Ooty the rain came on with all it's force and this time I didn't want my glove to get wet again so i left it in the car and riding with bare hands in the rain and cold was a real adventure as my arm mobility got restricted , plus that nagging feeling that i was going to fall didn't help one bit , had quite a few moments where my rear end slid out of line on the curves due to the slick road , the road was freshly laid , and it was wet , that made it slippery ... maintained about 60kmph through the whole stretch , It would be a real delight to do this stretch in the dry ... Reached Ooty and just crashed , the day had more than 100 kms of twisties and it was the best day of the trip thus far ...

lovely pics..

Thank you

DAY 4 ( contd )

The evening was spent at charring's cross buying chocolates ... Dinner was another hugely tiring affair , first walking around the block to figure out where to eat and then actually deciding on what to eat ... phew! it took us almost all night ... In the meanwhile my buddy who had gone towards pykara had reached the guesthouse and couldn't get in as I had the keys ... , so once we we're done with our dinner , packed some for the bugger back at the guest house and went back . A couple of card games later we decided it was time to crash for the day ... and thus ended the most memorable day of the trip for me , period . My pal also thought it was an unforgettable day for altogether different reasons ...

Day 5 - Ooty - Bangalore ( FLAT OUT )

Woke up on sunday to a beautiful day in ooty , Bright sunshine ... why the mad icon , because we had decided to leave and it gets bright ... Although my friend tried to get me to stay there another day , the calls from home ensured that my mind was hell bent on getting back .

We still didn't trust ooty weather so we packed ourselves with clothes to counter the rain ... I had a T-shirt and a sweatshirt on top and a Jacket on top of that ... my friend had 3 t- shirts and a jacket on him ... ( well this was mainly because I had some luggage to dump in his back pack and we were out of space ... , so one backpack and one big cover worth of luggage was on him and I was freeeee !!! , Said our good bye's by 8:45am ... Headed to a BP petrol bunk close by to fuel up and then headed back home ... The route plan was to go through gudalur this time since we missed it the last time . We we're out of ooty limits pretty quick and just near the turn off to gudalur we stopped for directions , just as we we're about to take off ... A cop waved me down ... I thought alright here we go ... the conversation went like this ...

Cop : where are you headed ?

me : Gudalur and from there to Bangalore ...

Cop : All the way by bike ???

me : **I thought : No you dumbjack I plan to take the bus from Gudalur ** ... I said : Yes sir !

Cop : oh ! he he he , I'm actually late so can you drop me till Gudalur ?

me : **thought: OH NO !!!! this guy is friggin FAT and i'm gonna suffer on the ghats , my poor bike ** but I said : Okay sir ! ( anybody tell me how to say NO to a cop ) ...

So the FAT lump got on my bike and the next 45 kms which was supposed to be the best ride turned out to be an agonizingly long one ... All the beautiful spots which I thought of stopping just went by with that COP , Cursing him all the way for it , I made my way back down ... Another thing , everytime my speed crossed 65 the guy would start shitting bricks , shifting his weight on the bike ... It was horrendous to ride like that , I lean left over the curve and he would shift right , the bike handled like a truck on rails ... My line was all wrong and my buddy on the bullet was just flying through there ... I was like ... Finally more than an hour later the we reached Gudalur and the cop had a gala time waving to his colleagues who were surprised to see him on a bike with two alien like creatures ... , Finally dropped him off and both me and the bike heaved a huge sigh of relief ...

Had a nice breakfast at saravana bhavan in gudalur and mysore was 105km away ... It was 10:30AM and we planned to hit mysore by 2:00PM ... From here it was FLAT OUT ... We ripped , ripped and continued ripping ... speeds continously in excess of 100 ... Our plan was to stop only if we spotted wildlife anywhere through mudhumalai or bandipur ... and mudhumalai came by soon enough , about half way through mudhumalai the plastic cover on the enfield gave way ... so we stopped to figure out what to do , he just set the cover in front and continued ripping same as before , Mudhumalai went and very soon we we're at Bandipur ... the only wildlife we saw was a batch of "langoor's" ... and soon enough we were waving goodbye to Bandipur ... From here to Gundlupet was simply amazing , two bikes going at 115 kmph within a second of each other was just awesome for us ... Stopped at the Gundlupet Coffee day for a short break ... it was getting HOT and we we're getting COOKED in our clothes ... No space to dump any clothes so we carried on ... Mysore was 60 km from here ... It was 12:00PM ...

Mysore was going to be reached ahead of schedule . We continued this absolute Flat out riding , the speeds did remain at 100+ and about an hour later we had reached the mysore palace ... , it was 1:15PM , we stopped to buy some more sweets and this added to our luggage ... the raincoats were of no use so we used the to tie up the luggage and we headed out of mysore by 2:00PM ... Stopped at a petrol bunk to fuel up the bull and my bud got rid of some layers of his clothing to stick to one T-shirt and jacket , and once again we were on our way the speeds didn't drop even now and somewhere along the way I had pushed my bike to about 121 kmph , the RE 350 was ahead and we were literally flying ... A maruthi Ritz overtook me from the left and then what I saw brought my heart into my mouth again ... my friend was on the fast lane at 120 kmph , and the ritz decided to overtake him from the right ... I could see there was no space there , he didn't , he pushed into a small gap , almost hit the exhaust of the bull , the entire bike just wobbled for a second there and i was like " oh fck , oh fck no , please don't fall " , he got it back under control and we both just slowed down to 60kmph at the side to get our heads back in place ... so we shrugged that incident and we continued and got our speed back , very soon we we're at channapatna ... it was 3:00pm and we stopped at the McDonalds for Lunch ...

notice the green luggage bag . that was the raincoat . now it contained sweets and clothes




took about half an hour rest as Bangalore was just another 60kms away ... left here at 3:30 and straight to Bangalore , But hey ! whats a ride back to Bangalore without a traffic jam ? so like clockwork near the ORR junction , a huge pile up was ahead of us ... It was HOT , I was getting COOKED and we had a Traffic jam and we were riding like maniacs the whole day ... All the tiredness we never felt till here was made felt on the last 12 kms of this journey ... wasted about half an hour through that traffic and the breeze on coming out of there was like heaven ... that delayed us and we reached Home sweet home by 6pm ... about 45 minutes behind what we originally planned ... unloaded the luggage , had a quick coffee and bid my friend goodbye and thus ended the best 5 day Journey of my life ...

And here ends my First trip Log ever ... Thanks to all you guys for the comments and for all the guys who viewed it too ...

Wonderful pics bro&very well written log!
Looking forward to more from you...

enjoyed following your trip and pics bro

Thanks guys ... , Will try and make the subsequent ones better .

Excellent dude, i really loved your trip log..Narration was very good as if i was seeing a movie.

Thank you ...


P.S: Guys , The all important detail that I forgot ... MILEAGE ,

Well a total of 25.62 litres of fuel was consumed , the ODO reading at the end of the trip was 802 kms ... But the bike still had fuel left (TN fuel was 3 bucks cheaper) , so taking the reserve to reserve method it came to reserve at about 891 kms ... Mileage comes to about 34.7 kmpl . Considering the speeds and the ghat sections , I find that quite acceptable