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Trip log

It was a bright Friday morning.Everyone got ready by 9 AM and we started off towards Gingee. The Riders were
1) Danny on his Unicorn
2) Raja on his Pulsar 150 UG-III
3) Myself(Satish) on my Apache 150 and Rajaram as pillion.

The route that we took was Vellore-Arani-Chepet-Gingee via SH-4. The road was pretty good except the Arani-chepet section which was really bad.
On the return journey we took a different route. Gingee-Tiruvannamalai-Polur-Vellore. Via NH-66 and SH-9. The roads were much better this way.

We reached Arani in no time. If you haven't been to Arani before, its a small town with congested streets & getting out of it in peak hours became a headache. Nevertheless we were covering good ground and we reached our first pit stop- Chetpet. I personally wanted to visit the Chetpet Cathedral(I am a catholic by the way) and also the boys wanted to visit it. After offering my Prayers and taking a small break we continued towards Gingee.



After a few Kilometer I realized that the Topography was changing very dramatically from normally rocky plains to Heaps of Pebble shaped rocks. I am used to this route because i have made several rides to Pondy via this route. We reached Gingee for lunch and to our bad luck, we could not find a decent hotel to even eat South Indian thali !!.. Finally we found a hotel and we gobbled up our food as we were really hungry. It was scorching heat outside and we knew that we needed to take a lot of fluids with us to climb that huge hill fort.Once we reached the fort entrance we realized that we will not be able to see all the forts because it was already late afternoon and there were two forts on two different hills. So we decided to climb the Krishnagiri Fort.

The Climb was very tiring and energy draining. The Hill was very very steep and luckily all the running and playing during evenings helped me a lot with a lot of boosted stamina. But still, the heat was too much and the rocks were radiating them. Finally after much struggle we reached the top and to our embarrassment we saw a lot of old ladies coming down from the fort,all so relaxed and quite opposite to what we were looking like..lolz, and we thought 'what the hell?..Have we become so lazy??'...

After a few minutes we realized that this Fort is not the main fort and its the Rajagiri fort on the other side which is the Popular one. This fort was the 'Make out' fort Lots of couples were sitting here and there in abandoned Granaries and temples and were probably immersed in a serious disscusion about the future of their love lives, lying on each others laps!!..
But besides that there were a lot of good old ancient buildings which made me take out my Camera and I started to shoot many pics. There were Granaries, gymnasiums, Temples, mosques, amusement halls, all of them abandoned!!.. I could imagine how great it would have looked during its glory days!!..

Krishnagiri fort pics

Good to see the travelogue out. Keep them coming!

nice pics....the climb seems very awesome......

The climb down was pretty quick. we know the rule- The harder the climb, the easier the descent.We quickly went to the other fort- The Rajagiri Fort. There was some bad news waiting. The ASI people at the counter said we cannot climb the Rajagiri citadel after 3 PM. So we visited only the lower forts. There were a lot of Interesting spots out there.
1)The Kalyana mahal
2)Elephant Tank
3)The Gymnasium
4)The horses stable and the servant rooms

The Kalyana mahal was a true piece of art. Entry for public inside the mahal is restricted these days. Don't know why!!..The Elephant tank though big was very disappointing, because the water was dirty and green and was totally not taken care of by the ASI. The Gymnasium and Granery were humongous and I enjoyed climbing the creepy dark steps to the Granary roof!!!...

Kalyana Mahal

Elephant Tank

Gymnasium

Granary








couldn't guess what structure this was...

It was around 4 PM and we decided to visit the remaining places outside the fort permises before it got dark. The Sad-Ullah Khan Mosque was there which was built in 1715 AD. Now it is closed and is not used for Worship. We rode our bikes to the next place- Chakkaraikulam and Chettykulam ponds- very disappointing again. It was just a small pond with green water, and a temple near by. So we wasted no time and went to the last place on the list,the Venkataramana Temple built in 1540 AD. When we reached there,I was shocked at how beautiful it was even in ruins!! For such a huge temple there was absolutely no one inside, totally abandoned, except for an old man who I later found out to be an employee of ASI and was sitting there to lock the temple doors at 5 PM. Very sincere govt.employees!! Don't know if he would show the same interest in opening it the next day!! Anyways the place was a feast for my camera. The 100 pillar mandapa was a total stunner!!..
Venkatrama Temple/was really lucky to get the sunset through the center of the Gopura


Temple door

The mandapa

Beautiful in ruins or ruined beautifully??


When we came out of the temple and lit a fag and had a conversation,we could only talk about how much the temple would have be adored by public only if it was in a different place and not in this remote location!!..

On our way back we made a very relaxed ride, taking several breaks,chitchatting about our college days and all our peer jokes that only we could understand!!..was an incredible trip!!..Only thing that i didn't know was, I would come back here alone to visit the Rajagiri citadel in my next solo ride!!

nice pics bro... liked it ...
keep it up....

Ride-2 Solo !!

A few weeks after our ride to Gingee,i had a really boring day at home, with nothing much to do. Suddenly the thought of riding to Gingee to visit the Rajagiri citadel crept into my mind. Didn't think again. Took my bike and started off. 90 odd kms won't be very long i thought, and it proved right. I made it to Gingee within a couple of hours and i was already at the lower forts. A foreign couple were there who entered the fort along with me and the local people were looking at them like King and queen of england.. I decided not to start a conversation with the charming lady( Till date i don't know why ) and I headed forward at my pace. If I thought the earlier fort that i climbed was tough, this one was higher and steeper, hence it was harder to climb. My only encouraging sight was that a lot of kids were climbing along with me and it made me think ''come on, you can beat a kid" and minutes later it was like "come on, I can never beat that kid" ...anyways the climb was fun and i took a lot of pictures all the way up..This fort was truely magnificent, and to build something so huge on a hill so steep, i was amazed!!...There was a draw bridge on the way up(in those days it used to folded up when the fort was attacked by enemies, so that they could not enter).Now its more of a fixed structure. There were a lot of temples and big halls at the top and there was also a bell tower!!..In those days the sound of the bell could be heard for miles. The bell was removed by the french and presently the bell is in Pondicherry.

nice pics.. didn't knew structures like these existed in our country!

Steep hill


Bee hives!!







Can you spot NH-66 ??



Draw Bridge







Bell Tower

View from the top

It was real fun visit at the end, came back home with a lot of happy memories and nice photos.
I would advice all Xbhpians to visit this place atleast once!!..Keep riding hard!!
-cheers.

Good photos there Sathish and its really a place to be visited. For long time its there in my list and had planned to ride there with my colleagues last weekend.. but u c Rains spoiled it.

Will do the ride soon.