Prologue

Heard about the place Meghamalai from my friend, when i was planning for my last years 10-day trip but didn't materialize as i didn't had much information on the place/route and also my experience is touring also was less. After adding in my to-ride list i forgot about it, untill lately our Ananth did a ride. After looking at his photos and hearing from him the route - wanted to ride there badly but Ananth made it understandable to wait and plan for the ride - so we planned for doing it during September. Now the plan is ready but bike ?? i have C500 but can't take that knowing the last strech of 30 odd kms is too taxing on the bike and the Rider. I decided to get my cousin's Apache but that too was not materializing till the last minute - but God in shape of Nishant helped me out with his R15. He couldn't make it for the trip and he was good enough to lend his R15 for the ride. Dude - Thanks a lot for that without which i couldn't have done this ride - Owe you buddy.

Now Cutting all short - All geared up and set for the ride. Packing was a bit clumpsy this time since was back home only 8pm from office and last minute preparation were on and with the new destination ahead i wasn't getting sleep. Still set the alarm for 3am and tired to get some couple of hours of sleep.

D-Day

Woke-up at 2.30am itself and quick cold shower woke up all senses. Geared up and saddled the bag onto the bike - some pics to set the mood for the riding and bid bye to loved ones earlier assuring my safe return - Rolled out the idling yamaha onto the fresh tarmac after last night drizzles. Reached the Meeting point - Sriram has just reached then and within minutes Pintu reached. with Jaffar and Steve already relaxing at dindigul as they left early, Yuvi and Badri planning to start somewhere past 5am - We 3 started rolling by quarter past 4 in the morning. Me with tinted visors rode with Sriram in the front and Pintu trailing me. With Villupuram as our first stop we did good speeds and reached villupuram by 6.30 - a hot tea/milk to refresh ourselves and we started our ride deciding to cross trichy for breakfast. Weather was awesome with occasional light rains for a kms or so and then dry - this occured for the next 200 odd kms and we with no stopping rode again in good speeds and crossed Trichy by 8.40am. We stopped for breakfast and laughed at the speed (110kms) we came - as were the slow batch of the group :-)




Now here the thing, we were supposed to be at the Dindigul by 1pm and we were only 70kms from that meeting point where Deepak from coimbatore said will be waiting for us - quickly made a call and informed him that we will be much earlier and asked him to start immediately. From there on it was relax ride for us - took the Manaparrai route and reached dindigul by 11.15 and parked our bike under the brdige and waited. Onlookers enquired about us and when we informed them about our ride towards Theni - they gave the caution of Bad roads which stays ahead of us due to 4 laning the roads. With some peanut candy and water to snack around we waited for others to come. First it was badri and yuvi, later some time Sunny, Rajiv and Ananth arrived. By the time we all caught up with hi's and started to talk and some water to quench the mid-day heat - Deepak arrived. So now we got to maneuver the road construction - but one of the boost is that we are hitting Dindugul thalapakatti for our lunch :-)




After our splendid lunch, we started our ride expecting some more bad roads, but seems like the part after vanthagundu was 75% laid on which we were able to ride much easily. soon we reached the Chinnamanur and from there Ananth guided out the left for the downhills of meghamalai and Deepak took the lead. with-in 4 km we reached the divertion to Meghamalai - boy oh boy after few kms into it we were to say exaxtly exhausted. took some rest under the coconut trees and gasping some fresh air for us and the bike for the torturous roads ahead. After the much needed rest we started our uphill journey - vistas started to uncover but the roads weren't grace enough for us to look around. Every one was on their own speed and we stopped at hairpin turn 14 for regrouping and get the glimpse of the vistas around which nature was to offer us - It was awesome. Some photo-shoot, some grab-fights for the last drop Bovento - we were back onto riding uphill...




Few more kms uphill, the surrounding started to change from bone dry trees to green grass and trees -- into much greener thick forest and chill wind. Soon the weather changed and we were riding in Clouds and Mist which gave us the gist of what is lying ahead of us in Meghamalai (Cloud Mountain). Soon the vista's changed around and all our tiredness were gone after the fresh chill wind blowing over our faces and we getting chilled under our mesh jackets - Wow that's an fantastic experience after riding all through the distance. Reached the guest house with mist being covered all over and by the time we settled our bags into the rooms the mist cleared for a while and giving us the tea estates and the lake views. Ordered food in the only mess and tried to catch up with all of the group. With some Contessa and Kan-Mark to beat the cold we chatted for sometime and soon we were joined by Ravi and his friend from AP, and Praveen and Antony from Kerala. Soon food arrived and its was all a communion way of eating with Chappthi and chicken - hats off to the spirit all and had fun eating like that. Some chit-chatting, short walk in the night - got feared up by the locals that Cheetah would come - spine chilled - came back to our rooms and went to sleep expecting a beautiful tomorrow...

A short preview of day 2 and what happened!

@Steve - How are you posting the pics? I'm able to see pics posted with Dinesh's but not yours. You can try using tinypics.com to upload the pic and share the link or upload in xbhp via attachments will also do.

+1; same here

BTW, Bikerfas - Sorry that I couldn't rate this thread beyond 5 & couldn't SUPERLike your posts & pics as only Like option is available

Sriram -0 I am using tinypics, not sure why u r not able to see the pics. is it just day 2 or even the first set?

As always wonderful bikerfas.

Wow! looks truly beautiful guys ! Awesome ride ! Have to add this place to my "must do" list

Ride On & Ride Safe

Fantastic Trip log and mesmerizing Pictures as well waiting for rest of the Log Dinesh.

@ steveburnside2001

Steve you may know about this but still the best way to do, we can upload the pictures in picasa and copy-paste the link and also do select the image resolution as 800*600.

@ Ananth - Do you remember what I had said!! 1 will become 10 and 10 will become 100++

Nice pictures and good trip

I don't know why, but I am laughing looking at the so called roads that we rode our bikes..
thanks for logging the memories Dinesh.

These two are best!!

Ramesh, Agree with what you said.

The Tea shop owner told me that many people visited the place after seeing the log, and now again we went there with a BIG group.

Now, do you know the positives?

1) More income for people there

2) More reach to those who never knew of this place

3) The locals staged a bandh protesting to lay in new roads in Meghamalai / Highwavys

And the Negatives:

1) More Pollution

2) More commercialization


I know its a bad thing for the place, but let the people in there see some money too.

Nice Log Sad that i did not take any pics except one or two of Dinesh into the slush . Will post them soon.
A short log from my end:
Myself Ananth and Sai had been here earlier this year. But we decided to come back with more people again in monsoon.
The schedule on Day 1 was to meet all at Bathalagundu at 1PM (which is a 2.5 hours journey from CBE). So i was in deep sleep till 9Am. Got a call from Dinesh saying that they have ridden a bit hard and have reached 70km before Dindigul, from where they can reach the meeting point in an hour max. So i had to hurry up and start immediately against the scheduled start of 10.30AM. I started around 10Am and was taking the normal boring CBE-MDU route via Dharapuram-Ottanchathiram. Reached the destination sharply at 1PM. Was Happy to see all the people( the most surprising thing in this trip was that we reached all the places ahead of schedule which is highly rare to happen ) again.

Thanks Tulasi !!
Thanks Avinash ! Bringing the rest too...

Thanks Yuvi - will log more today

Thanks Deepak !

@Dinesh - the trip log is good. liked the was you wrote it.