Bekal - Perfect rain ride

Monsoon creates the itch in me to ride to the green places and to hit the hill stations,
but this time i chose to ride to sea shore, however the hills pulled me to them later the ride.
My first destination was Bekal in Kerala.

Some info about place.--  Bekal is a small town on the eastern shore of Kerala state, South India Giant keyhole shaped fort, the golden expanse of a beautiful beach surrounding the fort, backwaters and hill destinations and water sport facilities nearby.Kasaragod is a beautiful town poised at the Northern extreme of Kerala State.16 km south of the town on the National Highway, is the largest and best preserved fort in the whole of Kerala, bordered by a splendid beach. Shaped like a giant keyhole, the historic Bekal Fort offers a superb view of the Arabian Sea from its tall observation towers, which were occupied by huge cannons, couple of centuries ago __ source : Wikipedia.

Early sunday morning we were on the highway heading towards sakleshpura, it was me with Shashikiran on my bike and Chandramohan(Chippi) with Karthik(Kaarz) on his bike, soon rain gods showered there love on us to make us totally wet before we could wear our rain gear. The total highway was wet and we were not in mood to wait till rain stops, we just continued our ride and stopped for few photo breaks and later for breakfast.

We were doing pretty good speeds even in rain n mangaed to reach sakelshpura by 11, and we thought of visiting to a not soo famous but very nice waterfall near by sakleshpura which is in hanbal taluk. spent some time in clicking n posing.

later continued our ride on shiradi ghat , the wet roads with lots of curves and the oncoming traffic was quite tricky,  need to get off from the road when few truck drivers were not in a mood to follow there line, stopped at uppinangadi for hot chai. yes it was very much required in the chill weather and nonstop rain.

  we reached Bekal fort by 4 30pm, it closes at 6 so we rushed in to the fort, it was well maintained and the visitor management was good. the splendid view of arabian sea from the top of the fort was amazing. and let the pictures tell the beauty of the place.

later we realised that by enjoying beauty of nature we skipped lunch, all were damn hungry so we decided to eat Lunner(lunch+ dinner) it was at 7 we had some rumaal roti and veg curry, and decided to check in to a hotel. later we got room 20kms away from bekal fort, pretty decent one with parking too.

Day2
Next day we got up early by 5 30 and plan was to go to beach for sunrise and spend some time in beach, unfortunately it was raining whole night and same continued for morning also, we reached beach by 6 am, no sunrise as it was cloudy and we dint play in beach also as it was not so neat.

spent few minutes beside beach and planned for what next. came back to room, got ready and had breakfast in near by hotel, took some kerala special pattu and savige. left to valiyamparabha backwaters which was 20kms away from our room.
when we reached valiyamparabha, we gottu know that it is a island in backwaters which is owned by some resort owner and we need to pre-book to visit there. just clicked few pics and left from there and took our way to wayanad.

 
after some 30 kms past kannur it started raining and there was a huge traffic piled at one of the city, in the traffic myself and shashi lost our way  and kaarz and chippi went in different direction. after seeking localities help and with help of Google maps we managed to be on highway which leads to wayanad.
 
But both of us took different route to wayanad which we came to know later. it was 1 pm and 45kms away from wayanad i got a call from karthik saying he n chippi already reached wayanad and asking where to wait for us, they said we are at periya and told us no phone network if u come up the hill so we will be waiting here come soon. My self and Shashi started to climb the hilss with 11 hair pin curves rain and fog added to the beauty of western ghats. Shashi was very excited to experience the fog and the rain with whole lot of greenary surrounding. and after reaching a junction where there was a bus stop, we asked localities for perya, they showed the route which led to very small road and after some 8kms no roads only slush and mud , we managed not to fall with rear end of bike dancing n skidding, later we realized we are totally lost our way and decided to head back to the junction. no mobile network, language gap, we are not understanding what they are saying in Malayalam and they are not understanding any other language other than Malayalam.
  
luckily got a person who can understand and talk Hindi he called the shopkeeper where kaarz and chippi are waiting. they both spoke in Malayalam and after the call they told us to go to a place called Mananthavady, we headed there and again with the help of some auto drivers got in touch with that shopkeeper where karthik was waiting and told them we reached mananthavady, after that they only came to bus stop and at-last after 6 hrs we all met again. and then decided to go to Sulthan Bathery, it was already dark and we reached sulthan bathery after an hour and luckily got  a good room for reasonable price, dumped all laguages and changed to dry clothes and had dinner at a near by restaurant and inquired about near by places to see and ended the day with sound sleep.

Day3:
We all got up at 5 30 and plan was to go to mathunga wildlife scantury, we were told that the scantury opens at 7am so at 6 30 we were all set to leave, but unfortunately chippi's rear tyre gone flat and we left with no option other than taking auto to 12 kms far place.  we reached the scantury spot and found huge crowd, some collage took a batch of students for wild life scantury and to our bad luck all the tickets for the morning safari was booked. we tried to get someones help for getting 4 tickets but not enough lucky. we need to take the token for tickets at 5 am and for that token tickts will be issued at 7 am. ao anybody planning for a safari in mathunga wild life scantury make some homework before heading there.With disappointment, we got a KSRTC bus and headed back to Sulthan Bathery and fixed chippi's bike and headed towards Edakal caves, another disappointment due to Ghandi Jayanthi edakal caves also closed :( .

we decided to go to karnataka to balmuri falls, we took some kerala famous banana chips and headed towards mysore and by noon 1 30 we reached mysore balmuri falls, we had a good time in playing in falls, myself and karthik had a small fall it was hillarious how we fell, by evening 4 30 we left the falls and eveyone were damn hungry, we stopped at a daaba and had late lunch and left the daaba by 7 30 and return journey to bangalore was non stop, reached bangalore by 9 30.

Altogether it was wonderful ride in heavy rains, the flat roads, shiradi ghat and wayanad curves, kerala beach, backwaters and not to forget the wonderful company of friends who made this ride more beautiful.
thanks to Shashi, Karthik and Chandramohan.

The Road Never Ends ...Keep Riding... :)

A small ride to Leh - Ladhak

4 riders – 4800kms – The journey to heaven on earth.

It’s the D day..!!  the day of our life time journey begins in few hours, all were pretty excited for the mega ride, yes Its Ride to Mountains LEH – LADAK, after years of dreams and months of planning its time for execution. Everyone was very eagerly waiting for the time to tick so that we can board our bus to the journey of dreams.

Plan is, myself(Chetan), Puneeth and Shushruth, travel from Bangalore to pune, where Avinash will join and we board the train to Jammu from Pune.
On 22^nd june Friday night at 9 we boarded bus from Bangalore to pune.

Pune : 24^th June 2012

Today was one of the beautiful days.... It’s drizzling outside, weather is cool, humid.... Thanks to Rakshith for dropping us to railway station in his car. He left dropping us there back home. Shivaprasad and Ashwath Prabhu, Avi friends were with us to wish us happy journey. Standing outside the station with all luggage pile up, Puneeth and Avi went inside the station to verify about the train and tickets which were still in waiting list(1,2,3,4 position in WL). We went to platform and saw our train already standing in platform 1. We ran towards 2AC bogey and searched for our names, we were mentioned as ABSENT!!!. Enquired with the station master if we have any chance of getting tickets confirmed and he told not possible as the chart is already prepared and confirmed. That moment we realized that the Jhelum Express is one of the busiest trains in the country. The time was nearing us when the hope-full turned hope-less!. Thinking to go in general compartment, oops to cover 40hours journey in general compartment would be really a bad idea ! We were suggested with an idea of starting travel in general compartment and later check with the TC if any seats are available in sleeper or higher categories. Later, once saw the amount of luggage we had. Decision was not to accept this suggestion but to think of something else. After getting dejected not getting seats confirmed :-( thought of plan B to Z which included traveling in buses, flight(fare was 3 times more than 2AC train fares :-o), taxi and etc... Confused and finally booked one more ticket on the same keeping faith in God.... And lastly  very happy to see the seats are confirmed with help of some friends in railways ;) Its  2 AC 37,38,39,40.

Day 1 Jammu, 26^th June

Reached Jammu safely, comfortably Enjoyed very much. Saw so many stations like chambal, Agra, Mathura and Delhi  which we were crossing for first time. Food was pretty good, met the almost expectations of a metropolitan corporate!!! Kudos to Indian Railway for giving so many people jobs... People clean both inside and outside train when stopped... Amazing to see so many people work with dedication.

 Somehow managed to convince where we need to go with the taxi driver and landed in GATI Jammu. Pretty co-operative like before. One of the bikes had some minor damages on its cosmetic part and I had my front tyre flattened, fixed up quickly and we are ready to roll.

Not able to withstand the heat at Jammu  added to that the thick riding gear what we were wearing , made people to stare at us thinking "kyon ye pagal log , ithini garmi par ithana jackets pehana hai"  The heat which we are facing after 40 hours of journey in controlled envt  was horrible to withstand .!!! both us and bikes were very hungry!!! :-P filled bikes with full tank petrol and entered a Punjabi dhaba.... Authentic taste  of punjabi thali , enjoyed to the heart....

Started the journey and after  20 kms when Shushruth was down coz of the temperature!!! Later even puneeth was feeling a little out of energy ,gave a pretty big stop in the next petrol bunk and  after recovering started once again with a vision to reach atleast anathnag... I told it was our vision.....!!! ;-) roads were good but the scenery was the best if my life (still more, better to come....I know!!!) Enjoyed the curves road of the valley.

 Some agitation were present on the way coz of Amarnath yatra which happens every year at this time. We were checked by the police twice or thrice but when we told our plans, they were convinced that we are not going to create any problems and were allowed to ride further....!!! Got an opportunity to talk to real heroes who fights for country....!!! 

So many military barracks, hoardings which shows the patriotism that should be present in an army personnel (ofcourse every Indian should have possess these qualities) saw those old phirangis, tanks, missile launchers(WOW)....

Came across the Jawahar tunnel, which is 2 and half kms and I saw tunnel for the first time, was fun riding inside the Tunnel.

Reached panitop it was getting dusk, we were having talks on where to stay tonight, favorites were Ananthnag or any place before it...!!! It would be very late if we have to reach srinagar and therefore planned to have dinner in Ramban...A small town on the way to Srinagar, Later decided to stay here itself which is 130 kms away from srinagar to avoid night ride and take rest. :-) 

Could not cover much just  173kms at the end of the day. In hotel met 4 bulleters from Rajasthan surprisingly one guy by name santosh was from Karnataka, he explained few road conditions in leh region. ended the day at 11 30pm, hitting bed dreaming about next day :)

Day 2: Ramban to Srinagar June 27th

Started early in the morning as decided, Dawn looks so beautiful in these part of India, I was awestruck looking at the rivers which flow in the Valleys surrounding with lush green, lots of coniferous trees, Chenab river which flows in the valley had little water,it is the starting of  monsoon..!!

 Loved the corners from Ramban to ananthnag, roads are pretty good some potholes and bad patches here and there, We already had got news of the curfew that was declared in Srinagar due to some agitation happened the last day,it was said that a mosque was on fire so some agitation. Took many photography stops and came across few security check-posts providing security for the very famous yearly Amarnatha yathra tourists,

Welcome to paradise on earth : Kashmir valley

Another photo break

Came across breath taking views of the beautiful valley lush green and at a distant we can see the snowcapped mountains.

The bridge on the way to srinagar

Titanic view point

First view of Snow capped mountains

Reached Srinagar by 12 pm and did some inquiry about Gulmarg and Sonamarg, everyone there said Gulmarg was not a worth visiting, so we decided to drop Gulmarg, Now the confusion in where to stay as it was all band in srinagar, thanks to that man who met us near the entrance of Srinagar....!!! He told us about the boat house which made Me and Shishu curious about and decided to stay in boat house. He quoted 1500 per room which is the cheapest of all kind of room, and pretty good, Never mind we have come to enjoy holidays

Our boat house.

Discussed about what we can do in Srinagar with the boat house owner and he offered a package which included all the local sightseeing incising Dal lake and other floating garden, market etc. it was 3 30 by the time we had lunch and decided to dump lugages at boat house and went to look around.

 We visited Shankar mutt which is one of 3 famous Shiva temple which were erected by shankaracharya himself who went walking from his birth place kaladi to Amarnath....!!!

 From the top Srinagar looks so picturesque, the city is so well designed that the river flows everywhere inside the city.

The Floating market  view from temple.

Then we went to mughal gardens(i can say it is a no compare to our Bengaluru's Lalbagh), clicked photos of flowers, birds, candid photography of people around ,believe me girls of that locality look very pretty ;)

 saw sunset at Dal lake, many shikara’s were floating on the lake an amazing view of floating market and the plain water of Dal lake and colored fountains.  

Shikara at Dal lake

Sunset at Dal Lake

Did  some shopping of famous kashmiri silk sarees, sweaters at Silk emporium,

and day 2 concludes with dinner at boat house.

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