A Green and Cool Sunday

 

 This was the first ride that happened after joining xbhp in the month of June 2009. Before the rains started to come in, we decided to go for a monsoon ride to the most popular hill station so near to tvm, just around 65 kms from the city,  yet i haven't visited this place in rains. The first time i went to ponmudi was in December 2008 on a hot sunny day and it was a big disaster ! Scorching hot sun discouraged us to visit till the top station , we decided to come back from before the check post. It was a lesson learned well then,'never go to a hill station when there is no rain' !! Even though i ve been to the same place not less than 15 times after this, it never ceases to amuse me with the beautiful roads, lush greenery , awesome climate and the company of some of the most awesome biking brotherhood. Whenever the clouds set in and i ve nothing to do, just cross check with the guys, and leave home :) Thats the way to some peace of mind ! Last time i had been there is on the new year eve and i m itching to ride up once again seeing the all day long drizzles and beautiful climate here in tvm.

 The men and the machines which gave me company for this awesome ride were Arun-Karizma, Anish-Disco 112, Nithin- P150, Varunrtr- RTR160. This time i was having the company of some born experienced tourers like arun and nithin, anish was nithin's collegue. As per the plan, there were 6-7 riders, but in the last moment, tintu and binoy(who suggested and planned it) skipped it due to other prior engagements. Finally we decided to stick onto our plans and started of at 7:30 from the starting point. Just before the foothills, we stopped for a small breakfast and then started to climb the golden hill , 22 beautiful hairpins ,absolutely nobody on the roads and scenic locations all around us.

After stopping for photo sessions all the way up , it took us whole 4 hours for a 50 km ride , which otherwise takes less than 2 hours ! But it was worth every moment and we thoroughly enjoyed and even at 11 am, it seemed as if its just 7am.

It was profile pic clicking session for us after that, out of which this one was my pic in social networking sites for long and nithin's too for long. The roads were completely filled with dense fog and it was slightly drizzling too which added to the woes. The visibility was absolutely minimum and we had to identify the road by the tail lamp of the bike going in front. We played it safe by going below 25 and it was so much fun ! We could notice some small landslides at many places on the way , but luckily nothing blocked the way and could stop us :D.

 

After crossing the checkpost by paying Rs 10 for each bike and 5 for one each person, we proceeded to top station.It was then we found this small photo point in a small forest. After another photo session here, while starting the bikes, a man was coming down tried to scare us saying this is usually the place some wild animals come out of the den at these times ! haha...no scaring us, we waited some more time there and then climbed up to the top station. I was simply taken aback by the splendid natural view from the hill top there. We sat there for almost an hour and during this time, clouds came and went through us and i was like standing in heaven, literally ! I ve only dreamt about standing on the clouds and it was satisfied finally ! After another photo session , we decided to climb down with heavy heart , as i never want to leave this awesome place if not for the hungry stomach !

 En route, we found another road going somewhere and we decided to check out that too as part of the exploration. :D . It was just leading to some quarters of employees of the estate there and nothing there, but it gave some good panoramic view which nithin captured in his cam well. After a very short photo session(compared to what we had in the morning), we headed back without spending much time there. The return run was a ripping session as rains ceased and the roads well laid. We reached Anish's house at kowdiar in just one hour and started to copy the pics to the cam and to our amazement, it came to more than 500 clicks in a few hours time from all our cams :O . Creating some everlasting memories, we parted ways making our plans for the next ride.

The road never stops for us, hardcore riders. Even after 2 years, this green and cool sunday is still etched in my memory and will be , forever as it marks the start of a wonderful journey with a new family and breed of humans called bikers. I ve never enjoyed  ponmudi  so well after this, may be coz it was the first time and taking my own time to explore in and out of it, but it ll not be the same again !

The original thread on xbhp which i just thought of revisiting to refresh the memories.. :
http://www.xbhp.com/talkies/tourer/8281-green-cool-sunday.html

The sudden surge of motivation to pen this down...well, a new thread on the same which brought back old memories..:
http://www.xbhp.com/talkies/tourer/17864-ponmudi-hill-range-revisited.html

My first long ride- Touring bug bit me hard !

Around 6 months after i bought the bike, it has run pretty very less as my college is just 5 kms from home and am not at all used to touring but just ogling at the trip logs at xbhp ! But then one fine morning , my friend called and asked if we can go on a small ride tomorrow, its holidays after s3 exams ! Why not? i was expecting this moment to happen, i didnt have anyone with this biking spirit at that time(its a different story now though). When i asked for permission from home, i was surprised that they did allow ,may be coz it was pretty near(some 75kms one way) but with heaps of advices ! I was uber cautious as this was my first ever long ride in my life and dont want to end with this one ride.

 It was a sleepless night, i woke up at 4 o clock got ready , picked up my camera, helmet and a windcheater and headed off to the starting point at 5 o clock. there i met up with my first touring partners arvind in p150, vishnu, adithya on his bull ,alekh ,adithya's friend who is a professional fashion photographer, jose with his yezdi classic. Though this partnership didnt last much, it marked the start of my new life. We started at 5:30 at the biting cold to paravur, the destination. Nobody had been to that place and it was kind of exploration, after a leisurely ride including a tea break, we reached around 1.5hrs later.

The first location itself was a bliss , a small island like place behind a temple watching the beautiful sunrise with some fishermen fishing in the lake on boats . It was so refreshing to be in such a location at this point of time and it was then i realized what it feels to be a tourer .After a short photo session , we were back on the saddle in search of more exotic locations in unxplored places. Just headed on to the road we saw ahead and cruised, but with in a couple of kms, we came across a bridge which was over the place which exposed the place where the streams meet with the lake. Then came other beautiful off roading trail which had the sea on the left and lake on the right with meadows all around . There cant be anything else more pleasant in the world at this point of time. We spent around 2 hours till we were hungry to death and started n search of a hotel !

When we were sitting there, a local came up asking if we would like to head to the island nearby in a small boat lying nearby ! It was so small i wondered if even one person can sit on it properly ! We gladly rejected his offer at once, when he said the fare for that :D .  We enjoyed its beauty from ashore and headed to see where that road leads to. It was a fishing zone/village , could see many boats with fishermen coming there. Also they said a coastal road is being built there from one end to another end of kollam. It looked like a dream road to ride on and on and on once it is finished.But this is kerala, i dont expect it to happen for another 25 years. then we spent another hour sitting on the rocks counting the waves and another photo session. By then were hungry to the core and couldnt withstand anymore as none were prepared for this .
After a small breakfast, we decided to take another new laid beautiful road we found en route. Well, that led us to another scenic loaction named edava and a beach called kappil where the lake meets the sea. Let the pics speak for themselves.As we didnt have any spare dress, we didnt enter the water, but it was just too good and i decided i ll make it here once again for a sunrise. Since then i ve been to that place almost a dozen times with many friends and relatives. After a brief photo session, we headed forward and learned that varkala is at a stone's throw from there !

Since we hadnt been to varkala before, we decided to go there too even though its scorching hot at 11am time. The view from the top of the cliff was just breathtaking , can sit there for hours together watching the sea. As we climbed down through the side of the cliff, reached the shore and it happened to be a tourist season it seems. Lots of tourists sunbathing and there wasnt any space  !!!! It didnt seem to be a good time and we decided to head back home determined to come back again shortly for a sunrise capture along with kappil which we did soon enough. Now let the pics roll, enjoy yourself.

17th April 2008

You might be wondering whats so special about this date, well, for me, it was the day which awakened the biker in me, the day when my Apache entered my life after one whole year of wait , the best moment of my life !!! After three years of riding an Activa, upgrading to a machine tag lined 'Barely Street Legal' straight from the TVS R&D designed for the race track, was a super thrilling experience in itself. This blog is entirely dedicated how this machine changed me into an entirely new class of human being, places it took me and stood by ,all the time without betraying even once. It has been a loyal companion ever since for three years and 30kays now . The most exciting period of my life did not kick off with my college life or anything, but it all started with my rtr and my journey called life with like minded fellow bikers, xbhpians . I never knew of a such a class of passionate petrol-heads existing in this part of the world, just like what i ve seen in discovery.i.e. dozens of sports bikes and cruisers cruising through the most beautiful highways of US. I just realized the fact then that i ve been living in a well like a frog all these days and its time to head out to see what the world is like and the gateway i found for that was none other than xbhp. I then took the pledge to be a safe rider and biker for life.
Let this blog be a platform to pen down all my travelogues and loads of pics . Watch out for that.