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Pre-Plan
We had started our day by watching a movie that had released just a few days ago, while coming back from the film something struck my mind, I turned to my friend and was like “Macha, listen I am going alone. You can tag along if you don’t mind, but you need to lend me your backpack”. He was surprised and turned to me and asked, “Are you sure?”.
I told him, I was sure about it, and we would be leaving early the next morning. After a few kilometers on the road filled with silence, he blurted “So when do we leave and what’s our plan?” I thought he was acerbic in his words so I just remained silent. Later, when I went to borrow his bag, he confirmed he was ready for the “ride”.
So, now we had Me, Ganesh and my bike, she hadn’t clocked much on the road but she had those thirsty-wanderlust looks. Ganesh went on calling others to see if they were interested to ride along, so far, we didn’t see any luck. After a while, we received a call from Chida who was ready for an adventure. Now we had a problem, we had 1 bike but 3 people. Now the search for another bike-friend started, around 8 P.M Lalith called informing us that he was ready to join us and would be at my place in 1 hour.
Only then did we realize that we didn’t have a place in mind. All 4 of us sat in the living room googling “places to visit in and around Bangalore”. To our knowledge we had seen all of them one way or the other, some started watching travel vlogs and some started reading blogs. Then out of the blue, all of us agreed on Gandikota (The Grand Canyon of India). It was somewhere 270 km from Bangalore. Now that the destination was set, all we craved was something for the mind, so we set out searching for beer.
I don’t mean to lie but for our placatory, we had an offer running on beer. Buy 1 and get 1 free on beers. Our happiness skyrocketed, we sat in the living room sipping beer in taciturn, some chose the sofa while others the cold granite and one on the beanbag. As it was our first bike ride, we didn’t have a clue about the difficulties that lay ahead neither did we have bike gears for starters, nor did we know about our bikes so that we could perform minor repairs. All we had was the zeal and enthusiasm in our hearts and smiles on our faces.
Day 1
Early morning around 4 AM, we sneaked our bikes out of our place so none of the neighbors would whine to my parents about our expedition we had planned. We pushed those bikes to the next street and ignited the spark plug with our enthusiasm.
Ruins of Lepakshi.After that exciting start, we now had to look for tourist attractions to see on the way to Gandikota, we looked it up on the net and we discovered a place called Lepakshi which was 100kms from our place. So, we set it on our go-to list and at around 8 AM we were at the footsteps of the temple. Now all our hunger was settling in, we decided to have breakfast at a nearby Tiffin Centre, we didn’t mind the cleanliness or the hygiene, all we cared about was filling our growling stomachs. After our energy was restored by the generic breakfast, we headed towards our destination. The road after Gorantla was hitting our nerves and bones, every stone and ditch was well handled by the bike but it took a toll on us. After our average speed had reduced in number, we reached Kadiri around 4 PM, where we decided to have our lunch in an eclectic restaurant, after filling our stomach and energy that was consumed in tackling those treacherous roads. We still had 70 Kms to cover ahead, after asking the native speaker in our sign language about the road condition up ahead. He assured us that the roads were just laid down and it was butter smooth. We were geared up to hit the top speed on our bikes. As we were riding through a village, the roads opened up to one of the best scenic views we could come across in our biking history. Those asphalts called us to ride on them, we enjoyed the whole road with a gorge in front of us. We stood there to bask in the best sunset we had ever
witnessed till date. At around 6PM we reached our place; we visited the old ruins of what was once a great empire’s infrastructure and mosque. We had one more thing to tackle, our stay.
We had seen many tent shops along the side of the entrance. We enquired with them and found the price to be reasonable, do bear in mind we were students on a budget. So, we hired a 3 person’s tent for 4 people. The owner helped us in pitching up the tent and made sure we didn’t die of hunger, but the food he provided was very bad, even our growling stomach refused it. So, we decided to cook Maggi (the staple food of every hungry Engineering student). Well we never had prior skills of lighting a bonfire, we decided to use our instinct, we had a lighter because I used to smoke and some kindle from the trees nearby and a deodorant. We open fired on those twigs using the deodorant and lighter as a flamethrower. Voila! We had just made fire. Later we bought some Maggi packets and borrowed the vessel from the shop owner’s wife who was very munificent in helping us even though we never understood what each other were trying to communicate.
The lit bonfire.We cooked ourselves the tastiest Maggi ever, maybe it was tasty because we had worked hard to deserve this food with such a beautiful view. As we were all exhausted with our back chastened due to riding for such a long time, we decided to rest in our tents, well some at least tried to rest, while others were loquacious about how we had achieved such a feat.
Day 2
Well waking up to a mesmerizing view, all 4 of us stood and watched the sunrise in silence , we didn’t talk , we admired how the gorge was lit up, every shade of those rocks that was enhanced by the sun as it’s light shone on them.
Waking up to this.We were thinking about how those gorges were formed and how they weren’t able to keep up with time. After all our silence, now we had to get back to reality as our stomach growled not due to hunger but from flatulence and excretion. We had no choice but to go out into the wild. Phew!! Thank god we had tissues to wash and clean ourselves. I see those people who are reading it, are probably thinking how disgusting we are, believe me, it’s one of the best feelings ever, dumping those extra weights from the previous day is weirdly comfortable. We had to clean ourselves, we searched along the sides to see any pumps or water source, we found a well where few had taken bath, never did we know in our wildest thoughts we could use a bottle as a mug to shower. The well had water directly running from the Penna River, we used the shampoo to wash our whole body. Just for the record, no our body hairs were not silky smooth XD. After we had cleaned ourselves like Bear Grylls in the wild, or at least we felt so. Now we dressed up in our so-called Riding Attire that consisted of ” Leather/Rexine Jacket, Gloves(ProBiker), trekking shoes and jeans”.
We thanked the owner of the hotel who provided us the previous day and paid him. He returned the favor by telling us about some caves that were 70 km from where we were. Later when we googled it, it was called Belum Caves. We set that as our next stop and headed off from Gandikota around 11 AM, after a few hours and ample amount of breaks we had reached our destination. Our stomachs were growling and our necks hurt from bearing the baggage as everything was stuffed in them.
We met a few bikers who were studying in Delhi but had come here to see the architecture and how the caves were built, they traded along with their friends and left soon. While we ate our brunch in the cafeteria. We headed towards Kadiri to have proper dinner at least, we went to the same hotel yesterday, so the employees greeted us with welcoming smiles and helped us fill our bottles and give us access to their washroom, even such small gestures go a long way to the receiving ones. We filled our stomach satisfyingly even though we knew we still had more than 150 KM to cover. After riding for a few, darkness crept along, later we realized my friend’s bike’s lighting wasn’t as good as it appeared. So we came up with an intuitive idea, I would ride in front of him and he would be diagonal to me so that I would light up the road for him.
When we thought this day wasn’t going well, we again realized our body was doing so good. All our stomachs had to flush it out, we stopped at a Petrol Pump which had hygienic toilets where we calmed ourselves ,after all this happened, we saw few cyclists inside the compound in a tent, we introduced ourselves and had a conversation with them, they were a couple who were cycling from Bangalore to Delhi. We bested them goodbye and headed our way, few kms down the road the bike started to give out a rattling sound, after a close examination by 4 Electronics students, we deduced the problem that a nut that held the engine and the exhaust had come loose, we couldn’t find a mechanic at that time of the hour. So, we decided to use the tools we had handy, we stuck to the screwdriver that had the same diameter of the nut, so every 20 kms or so we would check the screw and tighten it, we had to maintain our speed at 40kmph so that the vibrations wouldn’t exacerbate the situation we were already in. So, moving at slow speeds and watching native cyclists whizz pass you was very shameful. Alas, we had reached the NH that led us directly to our home, we stopped for a tea and smoke at the junction, hands down that was one of the best Tea I have ever had, we don’t know what magic potion was put in it but we couldn’t have any less of that. All drank the tea thrice, I even stopped smoking and started enjoying the tea, we appreciated the lady for her tea and left. Even though we had to stop every 20 Km to check on that nut, we covered the distance with a smile on our face and a little bit of frown because the trip was coming to an end. We had clocked 800 Kms in 2 days, which was quite an achievement from where we had started. At around 2 AM we crashed into our beds, some slept on the sofa because of exhaustion. I was particularly happy that we had done something daring and valoric in our life.
So this ends a remarkable journey the 4 of us would ever embark on even for a long time, well except for me because I left on my first Solo Ride in a week or two.
To read more, subscribe.
Thank you
We had started our day by watching a movie that had released just a few days ago, while coming back from the film something struck my mind, I turned to my friend and was like “Macha, listen I am going alone. You can tag along if you don’t mind, but you need to lend me your backpack”. He was surprised and turned to me and asked, “Are you sure?”.
I told him, I was sure about it, and we would be leaving early the next morning. After a few kilometers on the road filled with silence, he blurted “So when do we leave and what’s our plan?” I thought he was acerbic in his words so I just remained silent. Later, when I went to borrow his bag, he confirmed he was ready for the “ride”.
So, now we had Me, Ganesh and my bike, she hadn’t clocked much on the road but she had those thirsty-wanderlust looks. Ganesh went on calling others to see if they were interested to ride along, so far, we didn’t see any luck. After a while, we received a call from Chida who was ready for an adventure. Now we had a problem, we had 1 bike but 3 people. Now the search for another bike-friend started, around 8 P.M Lalith called informing us that he was ready to join us and would be at my place in 1 hour.
Only then did we realize that we didn’t have a place in mind. All 4 of us sat in the living room googling “places to visit in and around Bangalore”. To our knowledge we had seen all of them one way or the other, some started watching travel vlogs and some started reading blogs. Then out of the blue, all of us agreed on Gandikota (The Grand Canyon of India). It was somewhere 270 km from Bangalore. Now that the destination was set, all we craved was something for the mind, so we set out searching for beer.
I don’t mean to lie but for our placatory, we had an offer running on beer. Buy 1 and get 1 free on beers. Our happiness skyrocketed, we sat in the living room sipping beer in taciturn, some chose the sofa while others the cold granite and one on the beanbag. As it was our first bike ride, we didn’t have a clue about the difficulties that lay ahead neither did we have bike gears for starters, nor did we know about our bikes so that we could perform minor repairs. All we had was the zeal and enthusiasm in our hearts and smiles on our faces.
Day 1
Early morning around 4 AM, we sneaked our bikes out of our place so none of the neighbors would whine to my parents about our expedition we had planned. We pushed those bikes to the next street and ignited the spark plug with our enthusiasm.
Ruins of Lepakshi.witnessed till date. At around 6PM we reached our place; we visited the old ruins of what was once a great empire’s infrastructure and mosque. We had one more thing to tackle, our stay.
We had seen many tent shops along the side of the entrance. We enquired with them and found the price to be reasonable, do bear in mind we were students on a budget. So, we hired a 3 person’s tent for 4 people. The owner helped us in pitching up the tent and made sure we didn’t die of hunger, but the food he provided was very bad, even our growling stomach refused it. So, we decided to cook Maggi (the staple food of every hungry Engineering student). Well we never had prior skills of lighting a bonfire, we decided to use our instinct, we had a lighter because I used to smoke and some kindle from the trees nearby and a deodorant. We open fired on those twigs using the deodorant and lighter as a flamethrower. Voila! We had just made fire. Later we bought some Maggi packets and borrowed the vessel from the shop owner’s wife who was very munificent in helping us even though we never understood what each other were trying to communicate.
The lit bonfire.Day 2
Well waking up to a mesmerizing view, all 4 of us stood and watched the sunrise in silence , we didn’t talk , we admired how the gorge was lit up, every shade of those rocks that was enhanced by the sun as it’s light shone on them.
Waking up to this.We were thinking about how those gorges were formed and how they weren’t able to keep up with time. After all our silence, now we had to get back to reality as our stomach growled not due to hunger but from flatulence and excretion. We had no choice but to go out into the wild. Phew!! Thank god we had tissues to wash and clean ourselves. I see those people who are reading it, are probably thinking how disgusting we are, believe me, it’s one of the best feelings ever, dumping those extra weights from the previous day is weirdly comfortable. We had to clean ourselves, we searched along the sides to see any pumps or water source, we found a well where few had taken bath, never did we know in our wildest thoughts we could use a bottle as a mug to shower. The well had water directly running from the Penna River, we used the shampoo to wash our whole body. Just for the record, no our body hairs were not silky smooth XD. After we had cleaned ourselves like Bear Grylls in the wild, or at least we felt so. Now we dressed up in our so-called Riding Attire that consisted of ” Leather/Rexine Jacket, Gloves(ProBiker), trekking shoes and jeans”.We thanked the owner of the hotel who provided us the previous day and paid him. He returned the favor by telling us about some caves that were 70 km from where we were. Later when we googled it, it was called Belum Caves. We set that as our next stop and headed off from Gandikota around 11 AM, after a few hours and ample amount of breaks we had reached our destination. Our stomachs were growling and our necks hurt from bearing the baggage as everything was stuffed in them.
We met a few bikers who were studying in Delhi but had come here to see the architecture and how the caves were built, they traded along with their friends and left soon. While we ate our brunch in the cafeteria. We headed towards Kadiri to have proper dinner at least, we went to the same hotel yesterday, so the employees greeted us with welcoming smiles and helped us fill our bottles and give us access to their washroom, even such small gestures go a long way to the receiving ones. We filled our stomach satisfyingly even though we knew we still had more than 150 KM to cover. After riding for a few, darkness crept along, later we realized my friend’s bike’s lighting wasn’t as good as it appeared. So we came up with an intuitive idea, I would ride in front of him and he would be diagonal to me so that I would light up the road for him.
So this ends a remarkable journey the 4 of us would ever embark on even for a long time, well except for me because I left on my first Solo Ride in a week or two.
To read more, subscribe.
Thank you
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