as some one said, the best times come when its never planned. now it was very true in my case, as this was the shortest time in advance before which i had ever planned for a ride. 8 hours to be precise!!! it is 26th friday night 10pm and i call up muthukumar my close pal from school days. we start it up just as a usual "wassup" conversation only to be joined by our other frnd bharath on a conference. being quite a long time since all of us met up together, we decided to go somewhere, the biker inside me insisting the others constantly to go on a long ride. after all i had been wanting to visit yelagiri hills on bike for nearly 3 years now, so i suggested the place, and to cut short a whole long story, i somehow convinced my frnds for the trip. we decided to start by 6am on 2 bikes and ride down to yelagiri hills 230kms from chennai on the bangalore GoldenQuad highway for a 2 day trip.

27th 6am: since bharats bike wasnt really in a good shape he decided to ride pillion with muthu on his apache 150. both of them arrived at my place, by 6am but bharat having told their folks that he was going by bus, couldnt get his helmet along. not to take chances, i decided not to take him along without a lid, so after calling up some frnds early morning asknig for a spare lid, i managed to get one from my cousin. by the time we cud actually start the ride after getting the helmet it was already 6.45am. so we made a quick move out of the city, luckily there wasnt much of a traffic. we maintained a steady 80kmph on the wide Golden quadrilateral highway all till vellore, with 2 butt breaks in between. by about 9.15am we reached vellore which also happens to be my native. the odo read 137kms, in 2 and half hours, not very bad. so had a leisure breakfast and resumed the journey by 9.45am, muthu not being used to riding long distances decided to ride pillion with me and so bharath took control on the apache. my pulsar 150 cruised quite effortlessly with 2 up and so after a hot hot riding of around 70kms we reached vaniyambadi by about 11am , where we are supposed to take a left turn to reach yelagiri. after asking for routes we departed from the golden quadrilateral highway and onto the 2 laned state highways towards tirupathur. after about 12kms we reached the foot of yelagiri hills atlast, i was in seventh heaven after seeing the ghat roads, which was spilt on the hill like noodles. the enthusiastic me started attacking each and every corner with racing lines like i did the day before on MMSC track , only to be slowed down by the breath taking view which started getting better and better with altitude. took a break midway and decided to give some work to my puny camera, mean while ma pal muthu who is training as a salsa dancer, started flexing his muscles by posing for some in the air snaps. i really liked a particular snap with him doing a split in the air. great work buddy. we started moving again only to stop here and there very often to soak in on the fantastic sceneries that yelagiri hills was throwing at us. it was already 1.5 hours since we started the 13 kms up hill climb. as we were spending too much of a time on the ghat road itself we decided to come back in the evening, reached "athavanur" which is the main tourist spot on yelagiri hills and started hunting for a cheap place to stay. as we didint have enuff time to book the rooms earlier, it really took us some time to go around the place and decide where to stay. since it was a weekend and that is when yelagiri hills get to see the major amount of crowd all the hotel rooms where more than 1000rs a day, we atlast came to this place called "hotel yelagiri" we got a very decent room for 600rs with a TV and water heater, with neither of them in working condition. the time was 1.30pm when we finally entered the room. although the climate was cool, the dsg jacket that i was wearing made me sweat enuff to render the Tshirt that i was wearing inside useless for the next 2 days. after a quick wash we had slurpy lunch at the hotels small restaurent. took a walk to the nearby lake which is supposedly the only good tourist spot on the hill, the man made lake was quite huge with a shady walk path laid around its perimeter. was a good oppurtunity to digest the heavy lunch!!! boating is also available as an option, although we did not go boating. the place was quite neat and the chilly climate really tops the good experience. after taking some pictures i was stunned to see the camera's battery life closer to 25%, i was in for a nasty shock i had not got my battery charger along as i thought a full charge on these brand new 2700mAh AA battery's would last the whole memory card. so we moved back to our rooms for some rest for us and the battery. we had a very nice time chit chatting about our school days and other funny things, by about 5.30 pm we rode to the place that we discovered on the way up hill, which is a plane land with fantastic view, more of a BALCONY, and we wanted to make good use of it by watching the sunset from up here. my camera with its 4.1mp sensor and 3x zoom cudnt catch the sunset as good as i thought, so i ended up taking some good silhouette pictures with muthu jumping with some poses. it became dark quite soon and the whole place turned out real creepy after the darkness set in. the best option was to go back to the room. we decided against going for the fountain light show at the local nature park, so it was again a long walk and then to the restuarent. we were really pissed now as the service was getting on my nerves here, after waiting for 1.5hours without getting our order we walked out of the restaurent to another one, and finally had dinner at 9pm. the place gets really crowded with tourists and the hotel doesnt have enuff waiters and cooks to deal with the crowd. we crash into the bed after planning for next days schedule

28th sunday we wake up by 7.30 and get ready to ride down to a small tribal village called "nilavoor" about 12kms from here. 8.30am and we are riding towards nilavoor. the roads are something u will love to ride all day long, with so many different sceneries blooming with every meter you move. the battery was really low on power and i cud barely manage to get few frames of the scenery. after spending some time at a small rocky hillock taking pictures we move on to nilavoor and find out there is nothing interesting to see in that place. so we ride back and have a not so good breakfast by 9.30am. after dropping plans of trekking, we finally decide to vacate the place and get back home half heartedly. so we arranged our stuff's, packed up things and vacated the room by 10.40am. we decided to stop at vellore for lunch and not stop anywhere else as ma pal bharath had to be home by 4pm. since i had got some fruits to take home, the back pack got really heavy and i was quite not able to ride with the same zeal as i did last morning. but the down hill ride really provoked the hooligan inside me, i was riding like there was no tomorrow. i did the 13kms down hill ride in exactly 12mins and i reached a top speed of 110kmph in a short decent, thanks for my brakes everything was in control......... to an extent. way back was not as good a feeling as it was the day before, the ride was tiring me a lot and the GQ started getting boring, and to add salt to all this fast cars and SUV's wud zip past at berzerk speeds nearly scaring the day lights out of you. i did notice some accidents mainly due to highpeeds at junctions. so by 12.30 or so we reach vellore and decide to have lunch at the famous punjabi dhaba. after some lip smacking naan and rotis we move out again home wards. the time now is 1.15pm and sun was hitting us real hard. the lunch and tiredness made me really sleepy and i cud not ride above 70kmph so were muthu and bharath, the wide GQ was getting too boring to ride on, and i literally fell off catching a wink or 2. after a lazy 3 hour ride i reach home by about 4pm. the trip meter reads 484kms.

some points i would like to say about the trip:
1. i was aware that yelagiri has nothing much to offer, other than a chilly breeze and some ghat roads. but i was completely satisfied with the place as i was there with my pals and had a really good time with them.
2. never go out on a trip without your camera battery charger.
3. the restaurent in hotel yelagiri was of one of the worst service i have ever seen in ma life, and i strictly recomend against it for ppl who plan to go there.
4. go to yelagiri without any expectations and u will have the best of time there.
5.lastly my bike went through the whole trip without throwing up any tantrums, and i love her a lot

thanks for going through the write up with all the patience in world. hope the pictures turned out well, here are they for u to decide:

well having some prob uploaing so here comes a few teasers






more to come.............................