Heegondu Dandeli Payana...

It all started a month ago, the urge  for a real ride, a long ride which should include some adventure too.   In the process of finalizing the  destination many were short listed but this  place got the final nod from all the fellow riders,  yes!! It’s Dandeli this time – approx. 600kms in a day (ready for half saddle sore :P,Hope  next  time we are getting a IBA certificate :D).

We called it as a preparation ride to get Leh’D which would be done this somewhere in the monsoon this year..

As usual the hurdles for the ride is getting  away from office for 2 or 3 days, everyone had there own reasons for not getting more than 2days leave. So the date was fixed that we are riding on 16^th, 17^th and 18^th.   Even though we dint get an off  on 16^th which is Friday, we managed to fly off from office in the second half and  yes, we left at 1 pm as per plan.

It was well planned that  Puneeth  Shushruth and I  would be leaving from Bangalore and Avinash  would leave  pune at same time.

It was planned to meet at Darwad which is in centre of Bangalore and pune. So the D day arrived and we all set to roll with full riding gears and the heat(it was mere more than 38deg C :D) in the noon was already making us sweat.

We took Nice road to avoid city traffic n soon were on to the other end of nice road i.e on NH4, the bikes were already  heated up  within  30kms ride and soon we started cruising on highway leaving back the cages and lorries,

We took our first break at tumkur and second and a bit long one at chitradurga, it was around 3 30 and we covered 200 kms.

 

Later again we started to roll, within few min again we need to stop, this is for the beautiful windmills across the roads near chitradurga, quickly we clicked few snaps and mounted on to the bikes, the Highway was soo good with not even a single pot hole, but after hiriyur there were some  maintenance work was under progress and encountered few speed breaker for every 30 kms.

Another break goes with filling station and kamath upachar , with some hot dosa and cold badam milk, spent quite a long time here as Avi was updating us the status of his part of day on bike . There was a 1 hour lag as he left office a little late to beat the pune heat which was a failure.

After filling bikes’ tanks  and our tanks (it required a lot of liquids L horrible dehydration) we decided our next stop would be in Hubli, and by the time we left it was already 6 45 and it started getting dark, we thought it could reduce our pace, but after few miles we gained confidence and again started cruising  in three digit speeds(o_O even on RTR160 ).

Stopped at Hubli to enquire route and status of Avi, avi told he is 80 kms from Dharwad n will be reaching there in 45 min. we three started towards Dharwad after a tea break.

We reached Dharwad pretty soon and were waiting for avi at the junction, and got a call from him saying he is at the toll gate and there was some mis-communication which made him to ride till Hubli and again back to Dharwad which ate up time, it was already close to 10 30PM and we were getting call from the home stay people regarding our arrival.

After meeting Avinash,  the Fantastic4 started towards Dandeli, which was a ghat roads amidst part of thick evergreen forests of karnataka with  good curves and lots of potholes :D, we totally enjoyed taking those corners in dark roads. We were riding slowly while a bullet and a R15(V1) raced through the corners without minding about the condition of the road !!!

We reached our farm house quite late at around 12AM Jwhere we were served with some left out food, the people there were so reluctant to serve us that we felt a little negative about the stay for next 24 hours !! they  arranged us the tents to take rest. END of DAY 1 ----- tiring day

Day2:

Got up early morning with a better hope as everyday. with only few hours sleep last night we were feeling some more hours were required to get us back to normal.  Never mind, its over, we have come for a reason, reason to explore, reason to enjoy and not to rest thinking so, we took out our canons and sony(yes, I am specifying about the cameras) , parted away to capture  nature as morning times give more opportunity to explore photography, Avi was trying his hands on new 400mm prime lens which we had rented from toehold, and even shishu on his new canon DSLR.

        

After finishing breakfast(convincing one with bread omelette, bread butter jam and uppittu).  We decided to  enjoy the over hyped rafting after some options given by the resort person . Their jeep arrived to pick us to rafting site and  was a nice soothing 20kms drive from farm house to Ganeshgudi.

Tried to mount the GO-PRO Hero on the bonnet of the jeep which we were travelling and we weren’t allowed to do the same for some security reasons.

But anyways, soon we reached the point and we need to wait as the guides weren't allowing us to board the raft boats, we were 6 members in a boat consisting 4 of us and a german couple and our guide munna, ,sushruth and me were the expert swimmers among 6 LOL :P  which actually doesn’t matter in raft as said by the guide. The guide started his small class on what rafting is and how it should be done. Safety guidance etc. He asked can anyone jump into water so that he can show how to lift a person in case he gets off from the boat, shishu dint take a second decision and dived into the water. He gasped initially and started to float and munna showed us how to lift a person from water in rapids.  Later all of us dived into the water just to swim around, I don’t know how to swim but was floating on water, thanks to life jacket.

There were 8 rafts totally first one being the bigger, it took 2 hrs to complete the fun filled rafting experience, it was surprising that the water force in Kali River was more even in summer!! As told before we felt like it was a little over hyped activity. We were expecting more class 3 rafts!!!  Some pics from rafting.

                            

                             

                                            

After rafting we headed back to our tents and it was pretty hot, lunch was ready  we had nice lunch and took a quick nap in the tent(tents were like oven, phewww), Avi had a appointment with one of his friend in near by place so he went to meet her.  By around 4 pm we all geared up to visit Ganeshagudi and supa dam, I decided to try my new Go Pro camera, i mounted it on my helmet and and when we started to ride on the curvy road I switched on but I dunno , I was in hurry and my bad that I dint read the manual properly, couple of videos what we took went in vain, it was not recorded. Luckily we got only one video of we riding.

On one of the curves we stopped to shoot a video of cornering.

 

We soon reached supa dam and it was getting dark, soon we mounted our cameras and started to click some birds which were on its way back to there nests. Avi was trying the 400mm F4.0 L lens, after few clicks and myself and puneeth headed towards Dandeli  town to get some money from the ATM and to buy beer(#party time). Meanwhile Avi and shishu headed to farm house to inform cook about side dishes and fire camp.

After reaching farm house all four of us sat to have some drinks where me n Avi  were having soft drinks(yes, only mirinda), while Puneeth and Shishu settled with there beer bottles. We had a nice time in talking all stuffs related to bikes, Leh planning, girl friend(s), old memories, school days etc. etc..

There was a short movie shooting happening at farm house, we spent some time in watching those take after takes. And there our day came to an end.

END OF DAY 2 – adventurous day

Day : 3

Next day we all set to roll back to our home town’s and Avi decided to take Dandeli Belgaum road(via Ganesha gudi) and we decided to head back in same route which we came.

It was 10 am and the sun already was in its full  energy pouring heat all over the mother earth and  making us sweat soon, we clicked a group snap at last and started our ride, Avi bid a bye at Ganeshagudi deviation puneeth shishu and myself started towards Darwad, after reaching Darwad we took a break to hydrate ourselves and for filling fuel. We did a small mistake by not taking bypass road from Darwad to Hubli for which we need to pay 1hr tax  before reaching Hubli .

This was  because of a marriage function for which I hope the whole city was  on road and the traffic was crazy upon that for the scoop the hot weather.

After a lot of struggling in traffic we were very happy to see 4 line Highway, soon we started to rip and the return journey was as usual fast but we took many breaks due to heat and we are getting dehydrated soon and consumed lots of liquids. After the dusk our speeds also decreased and we were happily cruising and reached home by early night.

On the other way Avi was riding at good speeds with quite number of breaks of rehydration. He completed around 2 hours before we reached home.

We called this as a pre ride to our Leh trip.  All were happy about each other, great co-ordination btw us.

Thanks all. Great rides to come in the future. Gear up, pile up things, Never stop. RIDE ON