Prologue: I joined xBHP recently and seeing lots of tourers i wanted to pen down my own. That opportunity came when 8 of us decided to get out of the hustle and bustle studded life and go to a place where we can just enjoy nature over a weekend. Me being a fan of tourer wanted this trip to be on bike and this idea was welcomed by everyone else. Couple of us sat down and chalked out a plan about where to go and out of many, we narrowed down to two places. One being Sakleshpur and the other Chikmagalur. After further discussing and debates, it seemed Chikmagalur would be better especially when the forecast showed there were chances of rain in Chikmagalur over the weekend. And there we go, we fixed our destination, finalised our route map and waited early for Friday night! Gosh! I was actually super-excited since Tuesday! I been to lots of bike trips before but something was telling me this is going to be a memorable one, if not..the best!

Right. That being said..let me introduce you to all 8 of us:
1. Vinay, who recently bought his RE Desert Storm 500 wanted his first trip to be on the hills.
2. Bijoy, who owns a RE Thunderbird 350 wanted to go for a long ride for long.
3. Vijay, who is a hardcore traveller. However he does not own a bike so he decided to be a pillion.
4. Sudhanshu and Himanshu, brothers who are soo fond of riding. They own a mighty Pulsar 220.
5. Siba, owning a Pulsar 150 with a distorted headlamp did not give a second thought when asked about a long road trip.
6. Pranjal, ows a Yamaha SZR 150 wanted to test his bike on the hills for the first time.
7. And last of all, me, Suvrajit. I own a Bajaj Avenger 180 and yes, a traveller too.

So, 8 of us decided to go to Chikmagalur from Bangalore starting at 4 am Saturday morning, although I was not sure if we can meet as early as 4 am and kick start our trip.

We decided to take the following route while going: Bangalore - Neelamangala - Hassan - Chikmagalur - Devigiri Homestay
and take the following route while coming back: Devigiri Homestay - Kemmanagundi - Birur - Tiptur - Tumkur - Neelamangala - Bangalore

Finally, Friday night arrived and I was super-excited to the core. Had a light dinner, did some packing and went off to sleep as early as 10 pm and put my alarm for 3 am.


Day One: Woke up sharp at 3 am, double checked my packing, got ready, made some calls to make sure every one is up and ready to rendezvous at IIM Bangalore by 4 am. We did meet up at 4:30 am and by 5:30 am we were at the Bannerghatta Nice Road Toll Plaza (delay caused by some on going showers). We had to go all the way to Tumkur road exit which was around 32 kms. So we decided to meet up at the Tumkur road exit as my Avy was running low on fuel and i wanted to check my speed and go at 60 kmph. By 6:00 am we were at the Tumkur road exit. Filled up our tanks in the first petrol bunk we see (needless to say, full tanks for all the 6 bikes) and headed towards Neelamangala. The NH 4 was uber-cool and the cool after-shower breeze made us forget to take the Neelamangala exit and all of us were ripping off in the 80s. It was around 20 kms past Neelamangala where we realised that we have missed the Neelamangala diversion long ago. Thanks to Vijay he knew a diversion on the left towards Gubbi which would lead us on the same Bangalore Mangalore Highway and we took that immediately. Had our breakfast at a newly opened fast food centre (Tatte idlis, Vadas and Tea) and headed towards the B-M Highway. Another 40 kms and we reached the B-M Highway junction and it was already 9:00 am so we decided not to take any further breaks before we reach Hassan. It gives you sheer pleasure to ride together in the highway and people who have done this earlier should agree to me for sure. 6 bikes cruising on a cloudy highway..I could not have asked for more! We reached Hassan by 11 am, enquired about the road to Chikmagalur and headed straight in that direction. It started to drizzle the moment we left Hassan but we could not care less and continued on the awesome buttery-smooth Belur road. We made our second stop at Yagachi Dam, clicked some pictures and continued heading towards Chikmagalur, time being 12:30 pm. We stopped at multiple places in the middle, just could not resist the beautiful windmill hills and we were at the entrance of Chikmagalur gate by 1:15 pm. We enquired about the Homestay and headed towards it. It was a sheer bliss to see all Cloud covered mountains all around Chikmagalur. It is a feeling that tells you not to go back to Bangalore but to stay here, forever. I handed over my camera to Sudhanshu who was a pillion on my Avy and asked him to take pics as we travel on the hilly roads towards the Devigiri Homestay. It took us more than the time we expected to reach the homestay, thanks to the breath taking scenaries around us and we checked-in at 2:30 am. Everyone freshened up, had lunch, took a brief break and by 3:30 pm we were all set to go to Mullayanagiri.

Just to let you folks know, Mullayanagiri is the highest peak of Karnataka and it is something that we did not want to cover on the second day so we decided not to lie down even though we were dead tired after the long trip we had till here. To people who has not been to Mullayanagiri, the road from the base of the mountain is wide and it narrows down as you go up. The more you go, the more thrilling it is because on one side it is the mountain you are climbing and on the other there is a steep trench all the way down and oh, there are no shoulders along the road to the top. We slowly and steadily made our way to the top as it was raining as well. We decided to go in groups and with our lights on so that it is easy to trace the people at the back. We reached halfway and it started raining again and the roads, slippery. We decided not to continue as it was also getting darker because of the cloud cover and there were newbies in our group as far as the hill riding is concerned and so we went up to a viewpoint, clicked pictures and came down to our Homestay. It was 6:30 pm when we came back to the base of the hills. We were tired as hell when we reached our Homestay, so we ordered some snacks, thanks to the Homestay they already arranged for a Bonfire for us, after the tiring day it was ultra-refreshing. We had our dinner by 10:00 pm and all of us crashed into bed.

Day Two: Woke up by 8 am in the morning, got freshened up. However, i found out that except Vinay, everyone was dead asleep. So we two decided to go for a stroll at the backyard of our Homestay. It was nice morning breeze and we ordered tea for us and left for the morning walk. Although it was a small walk amidst the coffee plantations, but yet it was refreshing. We came back to find everyone awake and getting ready for the day. We had our breakfast-cum-lunch (a heavy one) and by 10:30 am we were all set to check-out and reach over destination Kemmanagundi. This time Sudhanshu was my pillion as well so I gave the camera to him so that he can shoot our group ride. We chose note to take the Mullayanagiri route to Kemmanagundi because it was informed by the Homestay folks that the rode is closed because of construction work. Hence we had no option but to ride on the much longer and much better road to Kemmanagundi. Numerous pics were clicked as this road is one of the best road i have ever rode on. So we took our time to reach Kemmanagundi, only finding that Hebbe falls is now closed because of the Tiger reserve and the so-called-under construction road (read Bhadra Sanctuary road) is actually open. Some of us who had come to Kemmanagundi before and has travelled on this road knows what kind of sheer off-roading is possible here and since we wanted to do that in the morning, we were actually overjoyed. Others, needless to say, were "less" overjoyed when they heard off-roading. Anyways, we wanted to finish up the viewpoints in Kemmanagundi fast as sadly we had only weekend on our hands and all of us had to join office from Monday. So we quickly went to few viewpoints in Kemmanagundi and reached the Sanctuary road to start our way to Chikmagalur. The guard warned us that the road is very bad till the first 13 kms but we ignored him and took off! The next one hour was simply unimaginable. We fell into pot holes, we woowed the clouds beneath us, we got scared by a monkey jumping from a tree (we thought it was a cheetah initially), we were kept spellbound by the breathtaking valleys, we rode in the clouds. It actually took us 2 hours to complete a stretch of 26 kms until we reached a Lunch centre outside the Chikamagalur town. It was 3:00 pm when we finished off our lunch and headed for the Chikmagalur and then follow the same route back to Bangalore. It was getting darker now and we had a long way ahead of us, hence we decided to travel together in a single line formation and at a decent pace, and to use dippers in case anyone wants to stop. We refueled our bikes and took off from Chikmagalur. It was an uneventful night ride (I wish i could say a star studded highway ride, but they were all gone because of the clouds) and we made our dinner stop 100 kms from Bangalore. We were worried about getting drenched because people who called their homes got to know that there are heavy ongoing rains in Bangalore, but thankfully by the time we reached (it was around 02:30 am) all the rains had dried up.

All in all, it was a good successful trip comes to an end. Looking for many more to follow soon...

Pics of Day two to be uploaded soon...