Thread Approved

Brilliant start Hooked on to the thread. Bring on the rest buddy

It's the Valparai-Chalaukdy Road !! Am I right ??

Thanks for approval!

Thanks a lot man But I am afraid, I posted the best pics as teasers

Spot on! I guess no one can forget that road once you ride on it!

nice teaser pics... good...waiting..

Ah! It’s been four days since I came back from the trip but I can replay every single instance/place/corner etc etc.. in my mind whenever I want ..

This is the magic that place has.. & the place? None other than Valparai! A less known tourist destination (Had to spell it out every time I told someone about this!) but more scenic than anything I ever visited!

Also this was one place I always wanted to ride to & now that I have done it, I still want to ride there again.. Hence calling it an enchanted hill station you can never get enough of it.. the never ending curving roads.. the green vistas of tea estates all along the road.. the abundance of wild life.. the freshness in air that just resets your mind, throws away your worries & makes you go there again!

Prologue:

This is how things took shape. Me and my colleague Sreenivasa initially planned for a south India ride for the long weekend of Jan 12-14th as we had to attend another colleague’s wedding at Guruvayoor on Jan 14th. Abhishek, another friend of Sreenivasa also planned to join us. But at the same time, a ride was also planned by Apache Biking Club (ABC) of Bangalore to Valparai. So our initial plan was to join the club till 13th Jan & split from the group to attend wedding at Guruvayoor & later head back to Blore on 14th.

My concern was the last day since we will have to cover 600+kms which can be tiring after two days of riding. Also the ABC club members planned for a night ride on Jan 11th so that they can reach destination Valparai early on 12th as it was 450+ kms from Bangalore, and since me and my colleague knew that we had to stay a bit late on 11th, we decided, we three will leave on 12th morning.

But everything don’t always go as planned is it? What happens? Will get back to that later


So the Day 1 log is only for our group of three. We decided to cover Ooty on the way whereas the ABC members chose a different route through Sathyamangalam Ghats.


Day 1 :

Our Route : Bangalore – Mysore – Gundlupet – Masinagudi – Ooty – Coonoor – Coimbatore – Pollachi – Valparai. Total distance 492kms.


Route Map.




We left from Bangalore at 5:15am and were able to reach Mysore by 7:30am. Since Sreenivasa’s bike was just 700kms old, he was riding a bit slow but his friend Abhishek had no plans of keeping up with him & used to take off the moment there was an empty stretch cant blame them as they were new to group riding, so I somehow managed to hold the group together and avoid splitting frequently. We reached Mysore palace and clicked a few pics.


Sunrise on the way!



Mysore palace!




The three of us, Sreenivasa, Adarsh and Abhishek.






Later had breakfast at one of the Kamat’s on the way. The usual idli, dosa & puri
Mysore – Gundlupet stretch was rather boring since it was just two lane state highway with some moderate traffic. After Gundlupet, traffic as well as the no. of people/houses slowly kept reducing and we reached Bandipur Tiger Reserve at 10am.

Towards Bandipur.



No that's not a wild bison! A domestic one




A few pics of Bandipur Tiger Reserve,






Few pics after crossing the reserve forest zone..

Fellow riders Abhishek...



& Sreenivasa...



The road ahead




As you can see most of the greenery has already vanished for the year.


We only spotted a couple of wild bisons at a distance of 100+ meters, obviously didn’t stop for pics since it might prove to be risky. Also the forest officials are very strict about stopping vehicles in reserve forest zone, feeding animals, overspeeding etc. & they have a good reason to be! Also there are lots of speed bumps, one for every 500 meters!


Gundlupet – Masinagudi – Ooty stretch is famous for wild elephants but we didn’t encounter any. Also the roads were quite narrow and somewhat uneven at places. There were a total of 36 hairpins. The best part is each hairpin has a wide angle mirror so you will easily know if there is an oncoming vehicle.

One of the hairpins, you can see the mirror above the red coloured board...



Some landscapes on the way..






Ooty & Valparai were the two places which was in my list for quite sometime & I had a lot of expectation from Ooty as well, after looking at the pics by others in the forum. But to my surprise, Ooty hills were all brown instead of being completely green. The tea season must have ended for the year! Here are a few pics of Ooty.

So sad to see it this way, as I was expecting something entirely different, but man! Valparai made up for all of it! Will come back to it later



A timer pic




We later roamed around Ooty in search of special Ooty chocolates and also to fill up our tummy.
This is a shop we came across which seemed to have a lot of variety of chocolates and we liked each and every flavour available!




Had lunch at a small place near the Botanical garden. By the time we had lunch & got back on the saddle it crossed 2pm. We still had a lot of distance to cover (200+ kms) so we had no time to waste. I wanted to hit the Valparai corners before night fall but does things always go as planned?


Ooty – Coonoor – Mettupalayam is an amazing stretch, lots of curves and lots of greenery & tea estates throughout.. it was trying to make up for the disappointment at Ooty but the catch? The non-stop traffic all along the route. It simply spoils all the fun especially the countless heavy vehicles which always blocks the roads and is a such a pain to overtake!


Some amazing landscapes along the route. These were clicked in harsh afternoon sun light, but somehow came out well






A small rest after some exciting riding



Another break




Other two were ahead of me as I frequently stopping for photoshoots..

A small stream...



Coonoor..





Does it really look like a road in India?? Hard to believe right??




A lone tree...




Another main problem we faced was most boards/milestones are written in Tamil and it is difficult for tourists like us to figure it out. All we could read was the kilometres left to some unknown place

Mettupalayam – Coimbatore is not the road for bikers! You have to be at a state of maximum alertness all along that route. You cant relax & let your guard down even a split second. Insane traffic, people crossing the road as they wish, vehicles taking a U-turn without any concern for oncoming vehicle.. I cant understand how people even commute there!!


There was also a dog which was happily crossing the road around 300 meters ahead of me.. I thought “One has to be always careful around dogs, but anyways it crossed the road so nothing to worry about” & then I am in for a surprise! It started coming back the same way it went, casually without even looking at any vehicles.. My left thumb is glued to horn but to no use.. Progressively slammed the front & rear brake & by the time I came to a halt, both wheels had almost locked

Took a break, had a sip of water & started off, thinking worst was over!


Somehow managed to reach Coimbatore & I can’t help but laugh at our situation! It is like riding in SP road for some kilometres (Bangalore guys will know what SP road is! ). We had to go through main city roads & they are literally packed to the edge. Riding in first gear with textile riding jacket/gloves & afternoon heat was testing our patience limits & add to that being clueless on which route to take! All I know is we have to head south so the evening sun should be on our right


Abhishek understands Tamil to some extent so we managed to get out of the city towards Pollachi. The route again consisted of all that I was complaining about previously . By the time we reached Pollachi, it was dark around 7pm.


Here again we were given wrong directions & had to waste half an hour to get back on correct route. So we couldnt reach Valparai before nightfall. Called up Srikant, one of the organizers of ABC if there are any hotels/eateries in Valparai as we would reach there late but he wasn’t sure if any were open. So we decided to have dinner at a place right after Pollachi. It was a small shed, & food tasted even worse! We ate something, had some biscuits/tea & started from there.

It was 60 more kms of Ghats and it was fully dark.

We just kept riding.. three headlamps lighting the otherwise pitch black roads. We came across occasional vans and buses but it was almost zero traffic. Also we had to cover 40 hairpins in complete darkness, which I was a bit concerned about as you never know what lies in store for you ahead I was also afraid we would run into some wild animals but I guess all of them were fast asleep.


We crossed Aliyar Dam which I had read as being very scenic, and all I could see was a bunch of lights tingling. Didn’t stop anywhere for any night pics of the dam as I didn’t want to come across any wild animal there. Also the road conditions were excellent. Superb tarmac other than short uneven stretches in between. So it was not much of a problem riding at night.

But slowly, the temp started reducing & our palms were freezing! We stopped for sometime & noticed that the exhausts have become cold instead of being hot! Only engine was warm so you can imagine the wind chills while riding!

We then continued towards Valparai. Called up Srikant, got the directions, went into the mansion where they had booked an extra room for us.

It was 9:45pm. Finally we made it to Valparai but we had no clue of the lush green landscapes and massive tea estates.. so all that had to wait till the next day! . Everything was just black for now. So effectively it was 16.5 hours on saddle including loads of breaks Crashed into bed after freshening up & having a chat with whoever was awake


Day 2 log will be up soon & that is the day most of the adventures take place!

Good travelogue Adarsh... and some catchy snaps too... good job with the shutter... Day one from ABC part will be put up soon

Beautiful Pics there Adarsh nice ride done.

Precisely my thought the first time I took this route few years back, opinions changed when i saw even worse :P Now, its far more civilized than what it used to be then. Especially in this route, there are only 2-3 places where the direction boards are in English, forget direction boards even the Branches of Nationalized banks, Govt offices and what not. It used to make me wonder where on earth have I come to, frustration used to increse with every mtr travelled. And this was when no Gmaps(even if it had been there, it wasnt working on my Nokia 1100 :P). Used to take photographs/ write the contents of the sign board and ask people at the next break at a tea shop/hotel in my broken Tamil (pity the people whom i asked). Started to remember the first few characters of the word to get to some place.

Hey beautiful pics man waiting for the rest.

Nice ride and lovely pictures Adarsh ! Sad about the Bandipur/Mudumali stretch though.. it's so gorgeous when its green !

Ride On & Ride Safe

Thanks a lot! Hope you will also enjoy the rest of the log

Thanks maga.. waiting for day 1 from your side!

Thanks a lot Phani sir! And I have to say, you will become an awesome grand dad in the future!! So many stories to tell so many experiences to share :P back to topic, I cant imagine it being worse! And even i asked myself the same question many times "where on earth have I come to?" & I forgot to mention, other two also had some close calls on the way in that stretch!

Thanks man! & this being your first post in xbhp means a lot

Thank you sir! Its people like you who inspire us to ride more & hopefully next time I will visit Bandipur at the right time

LOL on the Story telling part Dont worry, as I said, there are even worse place to ride, you will forget the older one :P

With love, from SRC!!

As spotted by me. It was great to meet you all on the way.

Wow! You are an expert in panning!! Superb shots man Thanks a lot!