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MUA : Travelogue - Kemmangundi Trip

Aarokke eneetaalum illenkilum...

Had been saying this for more than 2 months till one fine Thursday evening. I did one final round of calling the concerned parties on phone, before heading for my abode2 - Pluto. Nothing there had a trip feeling. No packing, no maps, no plannings.. I had my shoulder bag packed up. Inspired from me, Gasper too did his bit. Bin and Jim hadnt reached yet from office. Their shift time ends only by 11PM. I slept...

4.30AM... I got up to find "logs" of sleeping beauties beside... Kicked the ass of one and all. Once all booted up, it was (finally) for sure that the trip is going to happen.

Destination: Kemmangundi

Trippers: Rat,Bin,Jim,Gas. Mrid to join on day2

Mode of transport: Bike ! :-)

At 6.15 all were out and on the roads... We did our bit of 'preparation' by filling an empty fuel tank, and also checking the tyre pressure..

Little bit of truck traffic in the initial stretch to Tumkur, but all plain road after that..

Breakfast was at Tumkur..

Toll roads were magical. And the best part was "No Toll For Bikes.. Yippeee". That, pretty much, justified our plan to do the trip on bike :D

The onward route was : Koramangala -> Yeshwantpur -> Tumkur -> Tiptur -> Arsikere -> Chikmagalur

The initial stretch is NH4 and then we hit NH206. The final 40 odd kms to Chikmagalur was not good.. There was a better route to take, but we were unaware..

At 12.30 we had already done 245km and checked into a hotel in Chikmagalur.. All bikes and all bikers in good condition.. Bath, lunch, sleep... Just before the noon nap, it was announced "aarokke eneetaalum illenkilum 3.30 aavumbo blah blah blah". We got up at 5.30 :D

Chikmagalur is a nice tiny town, buzzing with activity all the time. Not much of tourist spots as such, but short rides around the town give as much pleasure... We left for MG Park. Gas tried horse riding. An inspired Bin tried too.. Horse riding is not for kids.. So Rat and Jim stayed out.

Back to room...Eat sleep.. End of Day1

Day2:

Contrary to expectations, guys were out by 6.30 in the morning. But still we missed the sunrise deadline.. Something in the wishlist was to ride 30Km upto Mullyangiri to view sunrise :D

Nevertheless, if not at Mullyangiri, we caught this on the way:

Mullyangiri was awesome.

Trekking would have been a nice experience. But that was never in our agenda. Common sense says that trekking leaves you exhausted. And with 3 persons required as riders at any given time, trekking was an intelligent thing to be left behind.

Lots of gimmicks here at Mullyangiri:

Mis-reading a signboard, we reached Dattapetta (or something like that..) Looked like a gated community stuff.. And one fella came with a receipt the moment they spotted us.. Dint spend a minute there.. Saved some bucks :-)) Back on track to K'gundi...

By 11.30 we reached K'gundi. Multiple disappointing things here:

1. The route which we used was the worse of the two available routes. "Worse" is not the word.. There was no road.. It was all gravel and dust. Poor bikes :(

2. The previous day, in approximately the same duration of time, we covered 200+km. But today, it is just a meagre 60km :'(

3. There is NO room available at K'gundi. The "special officer" was rude when he said "no booking? no room"

4. To top it all, there is ABSOLUTELY no crap thing to see in Kemmangundi. Echoing words of another group of santro-trippers "Hey, there is nothing here.. Its more of hype that was passed on over the years"

Rock Garden, Z Point, Shanthi falls.. my foot..

Rock Garden is no better than an average park in Bangalore.
Hoping to get some breathtaking view from Z-Point, we rode up hill.. but only till a certain bike-able point. Thats when ppl returning from the Z-point said with anguish "Pls dont go there, it is waste of time.. And you will tire yourself..

Phew.. that was one good piece of advice.. After all, the point num 3 above turned to be boon in disguise :-P

Now the only thing left was to visit the Hebbe falls.. Deciding to go against the odds, we said NO to jeepers. They claimed no other vehicle will be able to 'climb' the path. We were adamant and wanted to prove them wrong. We could prove them wrong only for half the distance...beyond which it was the kind of off-road hill climbing that we see on TV, that even hummer-types climbs with difficulty.

The day was turning out to be a flop show.. The only hope ahead is the Kalhatti falls.. We hoped there is at least a micro mini water fall there. In the end, it wasnt too bad. We did our bit of water games at the base.. And trekked to the top, high up, almost till the source of the stream.. Enjoyed the chill of water. Extremely relaxing times...

Had a lunch sorts at around 3PM. Planned to stay at "Birur". But a good samaritan enquired our plans of further visits and suggested we halt at Chikmagalur itself. The roads were good - it was NH206 again. So had a pleasure trip back to the base..

Mridul joined us in the evening. And we checked into another hotel, not wanting to tolerate the poor room service of Malnad Tourist Home.

Back to Jim's Experia.. GPRS.. GPS... and next day's plan was fixed for Belur, Halebidu (and ShravanaBelagola if time permits) Well, Jim says ShAravana Belagola :-))

Using all the info from net, Rat proclaimed "Belur is a must watch. It is 800 years old". Jim couldnt resist screaming "We are all living on earth and it is millions of years old". Rat retired for the day :-S

Day3:

It was only in the morning that we came to know about Mrid's strange dream...His R15 was stolen! Our hero rushed downstairs at 2.30AM to check if the black beast was in place.. He would have hardly got any nights sleep after that.. Cant blame him either. It is a 1.2L thing parked over there !

Checked out from Soundarya Residency at 7 in the morning.

Straight to Belur.

ChennaKeshava TempleAmazing place.. Built over 100 years.. This temple is said to be covered by sand to hide it from Muslim invaders.. Interesting! Not an easy thing to do with just man power..

Jim discovered that even in those days, technology was in good shape.. Chariot wheels hat nuts and bolts on it :P

Off to Halebidu.

Breakfast was from here. It was around 9.30AM. Halebidu is another Hoysala architecture..and pretty much similar to Belur temple. All rock.. All cool.. Places to sit and relax.. And lotsa greenery around.. Left the place at the scheduled 11AM.

Almost got blocked at this "burning tree" but we managed to squeeze ourselves thru..

It was power biking times ahead. The 85km stretch from Tiptur to Tumkur was done in 1hr. Phew!

Lunch at 3PM @ Kamat, Tumkur. For a change, we saw Gasper finding it difficult to finish what was on his plate.. Quite unnatural of him :P

We were at our juice shop near Pluto at 6PM

Tail:

1. The success of the bike trip has inspired into doing more such ventures. But Jim has strongly declared "Next trip will be a car trip". Jim paranjaal appeal illa :D

2. Rat had a day off on Monday on account of Holi. Gasper took leave and slept at home. Bin, Jim slept at a training :D

3. 700km in total

4. Nine days after purchasing his bike, Mrid had already done 1000+km on his R15 :-s

5. Kemman Video is coming soon ! Featuring VTV song :P