A Friendship day ride with New Friends

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One month after we had our first ride to ponmudi , we set off to kanyakumari this time on 2nd august 2009. arun had found out a new place near cape and we wanted to explore it :). Which is a better date to have a ride than a friendship day, with our new found friends for life? As always , this time also there were many new faces joining us , this time it was remy, vivek, ganesh, Deepak,vijin,and his friend . But unfortunately, balaji and vivek couldn't join the trip, but vivek accompanied us for nearly 30 kms in his LOUD orange baby.

The rides were p150(nio),P180(remy),P180(deepak),P220(ganesh),RTR (varun) and karizma(arun).
We decided to start at 7:15 in the morning n finally started the trip at 7:40AM. The climate was very good, slightly cloudy but sunny without rains-perfect for a ride.It was the first ride for Ganesh in his fastest indian, 220(first in our group, then.. :P ) and he was anxiously waiting to join xbhp with his newly found love. Though he is not to be seen after a couple of rides in the first month and got a tag for his name too within that:- falling indian.(that story will be revealed in the next log) He still has the 220, and guess how much it has run in 2 years??Well, it is just one third of my odo readings :D...

Back to the log, tt 8:30 , we stopped for a breakfast near neyatinkara as we decided to have our breakfast in kerala itself.

Then we stopped for a small photoshoot session in a scenic place .Here are some pics 

After some half an hour, we left straight to kanyakumari and reached there by 10 o clock. Had a photo session there and relaxed on the shore.The wind there was blowing us away and all our tiredness vanished. 

The main destination of the ride wasnt kanyakumari beach or rock, but a small unknown place near it known as vattakotai. All of us were eager to go there than spending time here, but we decided to sit there enjoying the breeze for an hour and by the time, it was too hot to sit there under the sun, crown coming to cape was increasing and didnt know how to get to our next destination. So we were back on the saddle and decided to reach vatakotai asap.

 I never expected such a beautiful place would be there near that. It was left unexplored without being ruined and had a solitary feel. After visiting cape, when we reached here, it was totally refreshing experience, cape was totally ruined by tourists coming from all over the world and lots of shops around whose wastes lying everywhere down the ground, people publicly bathing everywhere,etc. In short , vattakotai looked like a virgin, charming and beautiful, unspoiled where as cape was a total chaos. One cant find a better place to relax than this, but we came at a totally wrong time as the sun was scorching right above our head draining all our energy.. I was blown away by the beauty of that place. We started wandering in the vast expanse of the fort truly enjoying it. Only later we realized that a co rider was missing from the group. After we climbed up the fort, we saw him in other end of the fort walking alone taking photos. All the cams were busy clicking everywhere and we were all tired of posing for all the cams :P . During photo sessions, we had kept the helmets on the walls of the fort. Suddenly we heard some scratching sound n found Remy's helmet going down the wall of the fort. Poor Remy had to run all the way down to take it n was glad nothing happened to it.From this itself you can imagine the power of the wind blowing there. If you stand on the wall of the fort, its almost sure that wind would blow you away ! The pics will show that there are windmills located all around the place coz of this fact.  Then we spend a couple of hours there taking pics kathi adi. Even though sun was gleaming at us, we couldnt resist lying down on that beautiful lawn and resting for some time. Had a lot of funny moments there and decided to leave from there as we were feeling really thirsty and hungry.

 

one view from the top

                                                                 another view from top

Then we proceeded towards nagercoil and the roads from cape till the city were just awesome.Even though they were 2 lane, it was well laid n had very less traffic on them. This is the major difference between roads in kerala and tamil nadu, as soon as we enter TN, it ll be clearly visible in the form of roads atleast, you wont get bored of riding through them again and again .Kerala have a lot to learn from them how to lay and maintain roads ! We had a small ripping session there but the strong crosswinds were making it difficult. By then we were starving and had the lunch at a hotel in the outskirts of the city. There was still plenty of time left for us to return home.So we decided to have a pit stop at a place called udayagirikottai(udayagiri fort). We went with much expectations inside that .But to our disappointment, it was nothing but a small zoo which was surrounded by a fort like thing...May be thats the thing called udayagiri fort!!we just spent half an hour there and left back to trivandum. What was even more frustrating is that, when we had parked the bikes outside, some A hole intentionally made a big scratch in ganesh brand new 220 with some key. Other than this unfortunate incident, the trip was uber cool, can be cherished for a very long time, etched in memories.

Back to childhood seeing the park :P

The Epic Pic of Remy

one last click before winding up from there, thats the gang

So many friends were asking for the route and details about vattakkotai after seeing the pics uploaded in social networking sites. So here is the google map image for the same.

The exams are over, boring days are back, and its time to rewind the memories and head for all these old places and many new places left to explore. Watch out...much more coming up :)

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