My Life on 2 Wheels: January 2009

The three day vacation had made every one to ride away from the chaotic Bangalore, I initial thought of riding to Ooty on Sunday and meet some of the friends who went there the previous day. But later it was canceled as the were returning on Sunday. so made some calls to the fellow XBHP buddies and at around 10 navnish called up asking me if i was interested to come to his friends place which was near Madikeri. Few weeks back he had posted some pics of the place it was very inviting. So i was in, so the plan was to leave early around 5 AM.

25th Jan

The plan was to visit Golden temple which comes before madikeri and head to his friends place spend some time in the woods. We met at Nice road junction around 5:30 and decided our next stop at Mysore, next 90 mins was rip session. Stopped just before Mysore for breakfast but it was still 7, too early for break fast so started towards Golden temple, the roads were awesome till Kishalnagar. With one stop we were at Golden temple. It comes just before Kushalnagar, its a TIBETAN temple and more than 300 monks reside.

Main Temple

The painting inside are mind blowing, it can only be cherished by seeing it, beautiful art work. Look for the video section i have some videos of the temples painting.

One more Temple

This temple had some strange evil paintings, its like some story narration.

Some thing like this.

Posing time

Later we did some shopping , geared up and headed towards Madikeri. After riding 10 kms i realized i had left my knee guards in the parking lot, so with my heart in my mouth rode with full force in the pot holed road praying the god it should be there, only thing which came to my mind was, damn i cant loose 4k :D. Luckily it was there, picked it up gave it a hug put them into the bag and we pushed off happily.

The ride till Madikeri was bumpy, around 11 we reached Madikeri. We had breakfast at Navnish friends place. The house was typical 5 step house, after heavy breakfast we visited Raja Seat, we decided to ditch Abbey falls as it would be more fun to visit it during rainy season ;).

View from Raja Seat.

This place will be beautiful in the time of rainy season because everything which is brownish green in the pic will be dark green. For sure will visit only madikeri again in rainy season.

The place we were going was called kalgundi was around 40 kms from madikeri, from kalgundi to the house it was some 7 kms.

Before we hit the Jungle.

Hmmm. Good roads still

Top View

Here we Goooo.. :D

The house was on the other side of the stream, we had two ways to cross the stream,

1st option :eek:

2nd option :eek:

So here we go,

Its me.. Its me.. :D 

After crossing

We reached the house around 3, we were offered coconut water followed by a heavy lunch, we later left to check out the place.

Posing time

In the woods

Rest of the day was full time pass, navnish friends mom was very friendly, all three of us were just talking talking talking. Later at 9 had heavy dinner and we crashed for the day.

Will upload more pics and videos of golden temple later.

PS: All my posing pics are with navnish :D

Next day plan was to visit navnish friends place spend time there and continue to Bangalore via Hassan.

26th, Monday

We were all set to leave around 9, bid good bye and we decided to take the second route to cross the stream this time, aunt send one of the servant to help us. As it was Solar eclipse, we had to listen to lot of things from every one for making the trip :D

So we need to cross this, looks simple but aint simple

:eek:

So here is how I did it,

Till kavu the roads were good with good view,

Small bridge

Road to kavu

We reached navnish friends place around 11:30, we had tea and went to see there estate, beautiful place they got. They stay very close to kerala border, the estate start in Karnataka and ends in Kerala. :D

Stream that separates Karnataka and Kerala 

The estate had all kinds of spices, the had rubber plantation and honey keeping.

Oops that's scary 

Navnish friend explained us how all this is done, man i was so much scared, we were told not to make any fast moments and don't wave hands at bees, so even if it bit we should not get rid of it very quickly we needed to do it very slowly. I got a video of this.

We had the chance to taste pure honey,

Ready? 

Rest of the part is my stomach :P 

And we had this 

Wandered around the estate for some time, we saw some unique species plant, one of them was "All spice plant" when i tasted the leave, it had the flavor of all the spices.

We had our lunch after this and left to visit some temple which was built before 6th century :eek:

Pineapple 

Navnish friends place 

We reached the temple around 1:30 PM by the time it was closed because of the solar eclipse, no one was there so it was all ours,

Temple entrance 

Temple 

Temple 

Who is inside?

Then navnish friend went back to his place and we headed towards hassan.

Beautiful roads

Want to off road

Look what two R15's can do :D

Next 70 kms was beautiful ghat section with beautiful roads, at one place we took a wrong diversion and headed towards Mangalore but we were just 10 kms ahead of the diversion. We hit the shiradi ghats which are the worst it took us more than 1 hour to cover the 20 kms stretch. Reached hassan by 5 PM, we stopped at the coffee day in the Bangalore-Hassan highway, spent some time there and left at 6 PM, reached home by 9 PM.

At the end what a ride it was, 750 kms which showed me everything from beautiful roads to no roads. 200 kms of ghat roads. Had a chance to see how rubber sheets are manufactured, tasted pure honey, spent two days with nature thats all i can say :)

Click here for pics

It was the first ride of the year in XBHP, the destination was Kanva Reservoir, which is 70 kms from Bangalore. I decided to take my Shogun to the ride as it would be more fun for off roading ;). I told John i would be meeting the rest of the gang at Nice road junction on Mysore road, reached the junction at 6:20 where i was joined Saj, called up John, he said they will there in 10 mins. The next 20 min we were looking at the SBK which stop at the junction before they head to the Madur coffee day. John and rest of the gang came around 6:45, the turnout was good, there were 20+ bikes. After some intial hi's and hello's we headed toward our destination , met PKM personally for first time.

At Nice road junction.

Took the deviation from main road towards Kanva Reservoir, the next 8 kms very narrow pothole roads. As i was leading the pack turned around to see where the rest are, man it was a site to see the 20+ bikes in the narrow road, with a grin on my face continued :D. We decided to off road a bit and we went off into the lake making our own road..