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 16th, 17th and 18th. Even
though we dint get an off on 16th
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.
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
