"Running In" to Munnar-Valparai

Guys posing for a pic, but its takin VDO by mistake :D


Santoosh filming one handed in munnar twisties!!


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Pix by santoosh, keerthi and vicky

Call it stupid or brave i did it. Started right from the mechs shop at night alone(ok only for sum part :D) on a 1000+ km trip after collecting my bike which had undergone a enjine over haul. Mech says first 500 kms at max 50 and max speed of 70 till i give it to him for service past 1000 kms.

Pretty tedios ride for me cos of the runin, spending long hours the bike without exitement cos of the slow speed(first n last day). Coming home all tired n a bit sad. Thought no mood for log on this ride. The exitement and great memories, am very much happy to have made it to the 4 day trip and all the things i got to experiance. Could not resist but to pen it donw. But the trip did not turn out to be clean one, cos ppl got hurt. Would have been awsome if not for those incidents.

Praveen S posts the plan for munnar in the long weekend due to republic day. n bikenomad Arun's pics of valparai forest road trigger even more exitement and the plan came up to both Valparai and munnar. Initailly 20 people in but in the end not many turned up.

2 weeks before the Planned trip to munnar ma bike's connecting rod goes loose and Timing chain and chain tensioner goes kaput. Office work pressure ensure dat i give the bike for sujery late which delayed the delivery till the planed evening of the ride on 25th jan. After lot of contemplation, trading extrahours and next weekend for a leave on friday, i start of from office all ready with the bag i packed in the morning itself. To the mech's shop get my bike and 8.15 pm i put the bag on the seat with bunjees. Call home dat i reached chamaraja nagar and we are in a hotel for the night :D. my parents being very histarical of me doin night riding. Inform the gyes dat i am finally in, who changed their route plan to accomadate even my tentative participation.

Day 0: 26th Jan 06
Spending the first night was the whole problem, where i do be running in at 45-50 for first 500 kms. told gyes to carry on i will catch up with them at mysore. Start of towards mysore road, and the low speed putting lot of doubt in my mind as to carry on. 9 pm get a message form keerthi that they are starting and would meet at kamats for dinnar. I fuel up 10 liters and there i start armed only with a foot pump, tubes and cables with know hint how to use them. Cross my office and odo meter running in slow motion. Get out of the town and riding slow all alone still not sure of continuing. With a lot of doubts i make it to kamats at 10 pm covering 40 kms. There arnt any bikes there!!! they have left. Again message em to meet at mysore. Have a light dinner and finally made up my mind to carry on come wat may, no way i am spending the hard earned leave at home. 10.20 just after the dinner i hear an enjine roar, then one more and one more and quite a few. Yup the gyes are here all of sanjay(barrowed fiero), keerthi(ZMA), vicky(p180 v1), raghu(unicorn), santhoosh(p150/p180 :D), varun(p150 v2) and rishi(ZMA). me instantly cheers up. as usual always late starting. varun and rishi on their first long ride baring a ride to nandi hills!!!. waste no time in finishing my tea and head alone to mysore while the gyes have thier dinnar.

Hummin songs to myself, pitying myself on such slow progress simply carry on in the dark. but the exitement of the ride keeps me goin. Calclulating the time by when these gyes would catch up with me. With relative speed of 50 kmph, guessed they would start by 11.15, they would need 40 mins to catch up with me. after agonizing hour in the cold take a lonly break and look for erratically swaying lights. here they did right at around 11.45 pm. Signaled them to carry on. now i got 95 kms on the odo move slowly. never missed a mp3 player so bad. to keep myself awake and some fun i started snaking in the wide road, twistes show up from no where :D. 12.30 am come near the mysore country club to find some blinking lights. 150 on the ode. now the guilt gettin on to me of slowing these gyes down. We move together till out ot mysore towards nanjangood and i let the gyes go. Only waiting for me yet again to deviate towards chamaraj nagar. Yup again waiting for me doin 50s. Decided i would start of early tomm and if i cant keepup i would turn back alone so as not to be a drag. Thanks to the horrible road we stick together and in chamaraj nagar by 2.30 am with 202 on the odo. Gyes find a lodge for the the night. vicky making use of the services of a mad gye to watch over our bikes for the night. I try to catchup some sleep still unsure of my continuel the next day.

Day 1:
Awake before the alarm goes off. Still got 300 kMs for initial runnin. By now the runin speed has been defined as - "PKMPH" hehe. Gyes still comfortable in thier beds. Do i go back or carry on? Discuss with sanjay bout the pros and cons, but still encouraging me to come along. Then check the map with the gyes and decide to start off ahead and meetup at coimbattur. 7.15 i start towards sathyamangalam 75 kms from there. Initailly bad roads. I see the fuel indicator still high, thought some problem cos 200 kms and should have been almost quarter tank. i fuel up and bit and only 4 liters fit. Wohav bike is now actually giving 40 + mileage first in its life time. Pass a few towns and enter the satya mangalam ghats, Get hints of the views we gonna see. stop a few places to obsorb the environment. This ghat kinda scary with often walls broken of at strategic curves. Like when u lean into the curve u see the abbys below. Clmbing donw used lot of breaks not to rev beyond 3.5k. while i was goin slow enjoying the views around in my lane at 40s and this tempo gye over takes a bus in the blind turn real fast. i had just enough space to save myself esle would have taken the shortest route down satya mangalam ghats. Roads particularly not in good shape even 40-50 speeds was a challange. Down the ghats is section of nice fast twisties. daaaaamn gonna misst. In sathy by 9.30. yikes thats 2+ hours for 75 kms. dats a lot of work. Find my self a hotel for breakfast. Have the safest thing - Idlis. Start off the combi by 10 am. Try all the positions to feel comfortable. pretty unevent full ride till combi by 11.30. more than four hours on the road with 120 kms only since morning. cursing not to have covered the runin before the ride. I stop for 10 mins and the gyes show up. Get the directions as pollachi and valparai. and i head towards pollachi. Pretty confusing place with not knowing the language. past 30 kms the gys wiz past me. Santosh to improve his trip average plans to runin with me till pollachi. Resource full gye carrying snaks and water packets in his viser and have em on the lazy move. He takes some pix of me Standing on the pegs and crouching at 40s :D. 12.30 in pollachi, and the gyes have split there. takes some time for the every one to come to the same hotel. Hotels with the same names the culprit.

Again have a early lunch before the gyes and i move towards valparai. Pass a dam forgot the name. Skip it to gain some time on the gyes. On e more section of ghats, with 40 hair pin "PEND"s. yup thats wat was written there hehe. see n number of warning signs bout the seat belts, tyre pressure etc etc. thought how bad is it. but it was silky smooth and hair pin apexs real wide. ohh no i am in runin. pretty steap climb considering i need not to rev beyond 4 k and also not to let the enjine knock. frantically shift to 3,4,5th gears. Got the do the whole route again. runin not doin justice to this road. Pretty worried the climb would hurt the enjine. after 26 bends its down hill now. Take a break to give rest to the enjine a long one at a nice view point. Me a cam less gye, the views just for me to remember. Could see the dam afar and the road carved on the mountains. Big trucks really struggling to climb up. Dats some noice pollution with the constant accelarator of the trucks. Call up raghu, the only other gye with BSNL connection. They are still at the bottom. I carry on to valparai and planned to go further. am at valparai with 460 on the trip meter at 4 pm. I have some snakes while i wait for the gyes. Damn i forgot these gyes had SLRs n all n how could they move fast in the picturesque ghats could have as well travelled with them catching up on thier breaks. Called up again to let em know i am starting, but asked not to as we were staying at valparai that night. Call up arun for directions for the next day. Loosing cool, i head back instead of waiting for em in the sleepy town. 10 mins and the gyes show up. Sanjay shows me the hallow headlamp cos he donated some glass to the road. he had taken fall on a curve with a pothole while enjaying the view around. Back in valparai and Book 4 rooms at Green Hill hotel.

After some rest the sun almost down while we still deciding where to go. Vicky very much enthuziastic to head into the forest and stay there for the night with a bon fire. But we decide to check out a temple on the hills passing through the tea estates. Now all of us go in aline in the narrow winding streets of the town and again make up a show. Refreshing the memories of wayanad trip last year with 14 bikes.
pass through the meandering a paths among the tea estates and reach the top. Keerthi is lost. santosh goes to fetch him and back. the view of the sky with the sun just donw was awsome. Rishi just motionless looking that side. Real dark now with no lights and we kid bout holding hands not to get lost. See a bon fire below. when the gyes take some pics with flash the fire is frantically put off ??? wat was that. Suprised to find a big neat temple above. Air now getting pretty cold. santhos using the flash of his cam to find us the next few steps. hehe. Finally on our bikes and to the town. Again find hard time to keep both rev and knowcing under control. Riding twisties new to me way at higher gears and breaks. Not meant for runin. Get to the hotel have dinner and crash.

Day 2:
With the initial faze of the runin done with the trip meter showing 488, now i can maintain 60-70+ and with keerthi forcasting a lot of twisties in the menu today i stick with the gyes for the day. Early in the morning check out the cold terrace for the tea estate hills view around. vicky and keerthi come with thier SLRs and tripod. these are not in a hurry!!. Santosh invites me for a ride in the estates while they play with their expensive gadgets. We get to the hills and take permisssion of the caretaker to get in to the private lands for pix. Feast of the early morning views. Santhosh gives his cam to me pillion, saying the memory card is empty. me lika kid with new toy go click happy at any thing and every thing. This was fun. The gyes does some wheelies and burn outs at the top hehe. and a lot more pix. 8 o clock and time to go back. Rip back to the hotel for break fast. 11 o clock by the time the lazy bones get ourselves ready. sanjay finding no glass makes do with a plastic cover on the doom asthetically fitted by the mech.

We head to sholayar dam. Nice view point again spend quit a few minites there. From now on the the 55 kms forest road ride, the main thing that we came for. The road gets real pothetetic and back breaking. but the jungly ambiance keeps our spirits high. Unlucky not to find any panthers like arun did 2 weeks back:( but we did fresh and stale elephant dung every now and then. stop mid way to cause some noice pollution. have some snacks we carried, keerthi pullos out his seakers and blares songs. Jangle main mangal. Spend quite some time there chatting. start towards Athirapally falls. if only the roads were good so that we could slowly ride looking around the jungle but instead had to concentrate more on the broken road. the roads improve past few kilometers. nice narrow twisties with 60-70 speeds, every one goin in full steam. Dearly miss my revs. still some gravel on the curves and we consiously did small slides in the curves hehe, wee bit motocrossish. The ride feels pretty scary thinking about it now. Stop for a break at a bridge with water flowing below, varun runs down to the water and rest follow him down. Vicky was takin pix from above when a buss rushed on to the narray bridge and din mind stoppin for him. he had to climb on the delicate railings to avoid being hit. damn the reckless drivers. 3.30 pm by the time we near athirapalli falls, and the road changes characther instantly it was like black and white turning into colour. the road smooth that felt like gettin donw and licking it :D. but sad 60-70 no good for this road, signaled raghu to carry on and have fun me gotto to the runin shamefull on that road. Narrow curvasious with the lane painiting and all. vicky and rishi get far ahead while the rest of go the check ou the falls. now lunch and the small walk feels like a trek. Stare at the mejestic falls some pix and we head back to the road, by the now vicky and rishi have also found their way here. but they miss the falls.

After a round of tender coconut, let the enjines take over. one dream of a road. stop a bit in an empty parking lot built inside a curve. Gyes pop out some wheelies. the Passing croud only amusded. Observe all the ppl goin don hill with enjines off. hmm.. fuels expensive :D. have a foto shoot of the bike line up. Think of posing for the cameras on the curve below. have and go and lean somuch that for part of a second the wheel is of and weight on the left foot peg. yeeehoo i peg scraped. The fotographers having an argument missed the action :(. was getting late with our destination for the day munnar still 130 kms away and already 5. Come up on a deviation to take a ferry across a river with the bikes to save 18 kms. every body sacrificed the heavenly road for the experiance of the ferry. Takes some pictures and every body still chareged up with the previous section rip. after some time i see raghu signaling me to stop. Sanjay is down. Skidded on a curve. Hi mistook the fiero for his faithfull rx. the one he brought at the last moment cos the yam could not be readied for the trip. He had taken a hard landing on the his left wrist. He couldnt ride any more. The gloves, helmet and jacket saved him a lot of sking. Suspeciting to be a sprain and would get bettor. But needa get medical attention first before deciding further. Angamalai nearset town some 15 kms away. Vicky takes sanjay, along with varun, rishi and santoosh and 4 bikes and keerthi raghu and me wait for the gyes to come back. keerthi uses the time to attache the mobile charges to his battery. again speakers on to kill time. he also attaches a tube light the charger. thats some jinja and also attracts a lot of insects. Quite lonly and its dark already. Santosh and rishi turn up and we get goin towards a small town near angamalai. Now we leave the fiero there at the clinik and head to angalmalai hospital as the damage to the hand is suspected to be big.

Only vicky is in with sanjay and arranges for immediate attention. these kerela hospitals have pretty tight security. We wait for the docters say while me and keerthi go back to the town to fetch the fiero. Now sanjay is out with plaster on the left and its serious needs surjery and he needs to reach bangy soon and we were 500 kms from home. keerthi and santhoos find a volvo bus which would take him and also the bike below. sad with munnar on bike being his dream since 2 years and now so near and yet so far. and also got the deal with the slow and painful recovery process. with sanjay urging us to carry on with our ride. Every one pretty hungry and tired with no lunch. have dinner with the argument whether to continue to munnar or stay there for the night. Tiredness wins with many including me in no position to ride. Gyes get rooms for us and halt for the day at angamalai for some much needed rest. 628 on the trip meter.

Day 3:
Start late almsot 8.30 am and munnar still 110 kms away. Now i am riding around 70-80 n 5 k RPMs. gyes also around the same speed so can aswell go with them rather than goin ahead as they would be doin plenty of pic stops. Now one more section of awsome twisties. truck loads of S curves and wat not goin uphill. my speed constant 70 come wat ever curve, cos mainly i din for rev beyond 5 k. So endup carrying much more speed into the curve and lean more. Updated my personal lean records there cos the tyre was used up on the sides till the edge, where last time some half centimeter was left. so was almost everybody else's. Just hug the left edge of the road and do the fun thing. Pass the deviation for Idduki dam, but keerthi says its far and we would loose time. We take a break at valhara falls while santhoosh has gone ahead. Some fluids and we start again to find santhoosh at a view point. the bugger had finished a whole bag of straberies all alone grr. 50 kms to munnar one more butt break at one more falls. Surpriced to see the the tyres on the sides fully used, ask santhosh to take some pix of my tyre. 5 k rpm not doin justice to the road. finally we reach munnar around 12.30 with 731 on the ok. The temperatures cool donw as we approach. Get a call from sanjay, he is home. We try to find a room or something. Had to go through narrow roads among tea estates in search of the resorts. All goin slowly in a single file, putting up quite a impressing show all full gear clad. after a couple of em found pretty cottage with 7 beds. But needed to climb steap 2 kms. Pretty heard on my bike had tough time avoiding both knocking and reving. We go all the way to the top to an awsome view of the mountains. think of doin something in the evening but now we are hungry. Climb donw half way to the cottage and decide not to take my bike up again.

The view from the cottage itself was enought keep watching. BSNL signal full but no call goes. wat crap. Gyes put on the TV with our fav channel blessing TV. mute in and put on keerthi's speaker and santhoosh puts appropriate numbers from the ipod.:D that was hilerious, ROTFLOAO. Loose sense of time. the lazy motel gys bring lunch 2 hours after we order it and 5 o clock realize how much time we lost. Think of some places to go before sun donw. Again go in the sningle file throught the city to the other side so as not to loose eachother with mobile signals not at its best. Again get amazing stares from ppl around and point their fingures at our number plates. Yeah from bangy alright. Some kids get exited and start vaving at the procession, wave back hehe. almost 6.00 at other end of the town and now wat? loose more time in discussions. Some elger gyes in car stop by seeing our number plates and chat a bit. One gyes says "You gyes came from bangy all the way on bikes, u gyes will have a tough time by the time u reach home. applly for leave now itself" with a concerned look. hehe heards that before. vicky and rishi head back to and a newly discoverd trail by vicky and also he wanted to arrange a bon fire for the night. While the rest of us stay decide to check out a supposedly hollywoods set of an india village. Now it was really cold. do some foto session in the sets jhopadies. and go the tea stall. then we go off road a bit on a uneven area full or small layer of grass. ly down there and chat lazily. Get some tea and snaks delivered to us from the tea stall. Talk of all sorts of things while varun goes around checks for some booze.

8 o clock we decide to head back, as kerela sleeps early. get into the town and do some herbal and eucalyptas oil shopping. Get to the cottage and again have a very expensive lazy dinner. with heated discussions of whos goin where tomm. raghu, varun and me pretty much decided to head straight to bangy. got office u see. but we havent seen any thing in munnar yet. so we decide to start early by 6, visit top station, echo point and matu patty dam all falling on the same road. vicky and keerthi munching about keerthi's plan to cover allepe,kanyakumari, pondy and then bangy phew. keerthi aslo joining us early morning for top station. long ride tommorow need some rest and we all crash.

Day 4:
5 O clock the alarm goes off. n surprice surprice every body up by and ready by 6. never seen that before hehe. we even gotto see vicky rise before sunrise :D. Raghu, santhoosh, varun and me pack our bags and leave the cottage for good while keerthi,vicky and rishi plan to come back pack and head to k'kumari. Pass calmly through the tea estates and then in the city take a deviation to the Top station. 40 kms to go. The timing was great, early morning views mesmorising. we ride cooly hardly watching the road ang trying to look how much ever we could. every turn is pic point. a particluar view of a mountain range on one side the tea estates below, the shadow of the of the mountains on the other side covering half of the mountains the first side. with lazy balls of cloudes hovering above mountain summits. a lake with thick mist rising. all too big to fit in the camera. find an elephant at acurve. is it wild? na its tied to a chain. rmbr the pix PraveenS and arun took of the same hathi when they came here. I accidently touch a electric fense wire. oops lucky there wasnt any power in it. Get to matupatti dam and lo, keerthi has hit reserve, and still needo cover atleat 70 kms to fing a petrol bunk. manage a whiskky bottly from the dam care taker to transfer fuel from other bikes. The views gettin bettor and bettor so pretty much bettor than the views in swiz where i had been couple of months back. A lot of pic stops and an one left curve we take and the view just hits. Every body exclaims, the one view is total paisa vasool for the ride, lemme try it was like, lush green mountains to the left and right below, in the u shape, and white clouds below in between and extending to the horizon and the early morning sun. hehe why the trouble can check out the pix. spend quite some time there taking turns for the pictures. the sun starts chasing the clouds below. Lend 1.5 literl of fuel from by bike to keerthi's. yeah i measured it cos my bike was behaving krazy like "petrol khatham hi nahi hondha" very curious of the mileage. carry on till almost dead end. thought we do head to kodai or pollachi directly from top station instead of goin to munnar. but the kodai forest route is leagally closed. santhoosh and rishi go to acertain it. come to know the pollachi road it tooo bad and woudl not save any time. then wat from munnar it is. have a round of tea and sweet bondas at a stall. its 10 o clock and time to go. have to reach bangy by night.

nobody in mood to leave trying to get as many pics as possilble. Raghu, varun and me start off back to munnar. stop at gather of people waiting for santhoosh as he to wanted to join us. and it is the echo point there. we missed in the morning as nobody was there. well many ppl now shouting all kinds of languages to get the echo. santhosh shows up and so do the others. Find a local walking with an elephant with seating on top of the elephant. 300 rs for 15 mins ride. but we got no time. santhoosh decides to stay back with the gyes. Raghu varun n me bid byes with em and destination bangalore it is. Now getting to the day the empty roads in the morning is with lot of traffic, every turn surprising us with a vehicle. pass though a gathering of college girls who stare at us. lean man lean more than the need to give chamak hehe :D. nearing munnar i hit reserve. waaaat 827 on the trip with 18.5 liters of fuel??? dats 46.1 per liter. wow my previous best was 34 long time back, was giving 28 just before the overhual. most of the ride was still low RPM ride any way. gonna stick below 5k for the rest of the ride too. Get to munnar. varun fetches some straberries. Already 11 am with the trip meter 833. thought of haveing food covering some distance.

Now we start for bangy we plan to take the udumalai, erode, salem k'giri route thinking we do get the four lane highway from erode and could reach bangy without much trouble. fuel up for 10 liters. we get out of the city. i notice an immidiate diff in the bike. damn the petrol was of poor quality. bike not pulling as it did 10 mins back. damn n i put all 10 liters of it :(. thats a lesson learnt not to put fuel in small town. The never ending twisties goes on. so does the picturesque landscape goes on. Varun wants to go slow and look around. but we have no time do we. cajole him to carry on. 70 kms to udumalai. but the progress is slow in the mountains. over taking vehicles gets tough. climbing donw we take a break. i needa unpack myself with al the extra cloths on, which i put on for the chilly morning ride. Me lost the list of cities that santhoosh had given. thought we in wrong route. but raghu says we din pass any deviations. after Mariyoor we pass through chinnar wild life santure. ok chinnar was the list, and we goin right. one pretty strech and pretty roads tooo. none of us got the cam now. no pix till bangy. Many a view just for us to remember. After chinnar we come to the forest check post. the guard confused whether or not to check our bags for stolen sandle wood !!. Varun was carrying a wooden peace which he evacked from the set we been y'day. it was visible too hehe. but i judging us unlikely to smuggle sandle wood the left us go hehe. the roads strighten up a bit, but its already 1.30. pretty slow progress. our main aim now was to reach erode asap.

reaching udumalai asking for directions for tirupur. which is some 60 kms away. roads broaden up and rip time it is but not for me. after umpteen number of requests to varun and raghu to carry on to bangy, they still wanted to wait for me to catcup doin 60-70-80. was ok in twisties where i could keepup with the gyes. Damn missed a chance to race with a p150 v2. damn gotto do runin :(. Just when i was imagining how nice to ride a ZMA there at 130, i see a tvs 50 gye carrying some oil simply crossed the highway with out looking baresly missing the on coming truck. was like came out of no where due to the tall grass around. phew any faster i was would have been in soup. pretty scary thing it was. damn these &#*^#*#. wish the truck had blown him off grrr. n tvs 50s still huant me long after my crash with one. we pass through some fields of huge wind mills hundreds of em. damn no camera and raghu with bettor fone cam is far ahead. stop varun and manage a couple of pix from my stupid fone cam. 3 O clock in thirpur and no break fast yet. and raghu finds one veg restraunt and cant help but hog. 3.45 by the time we start and trip meter hitting 1000. get misguided and do an extra 20 kms. not many sign boards in the state highways in TN plus the language. then riding 35 kms blindly hoping we in the right direction. yup we were on the correct route. finally sombody points us the direction and says salem 85 kms. watt still 85!! and ist 320 kms from salem to bangy. hmmm... we got a tough night ride to do. now on the traffice get horrible. good roads but every overtaking takes time. in much more hurry to get to erode. stop to fill the fuel and raghu suspects loss of enjine oil. check the dipstick ok none of us knew the correct level and he poured some power 1 and keep checking the dip stick level and its still the same and even after pouring 75% of 1 liter can!!!. wat the heck stopped it. time to hit the road.negotiate the shitty traffic runnin or no runnin speeds beyond 70 is a luxuary. at erode at 5.30 and still no sign of the 4 lane highway. now we make run to salem to find it there. damn 70-80 not enough and me gettin pretty frastrated not being able to over take vehicles moving at 80. sum how reach salem by 6.30 and looks like its heavenly 4 lane highway all the way. felt like ages to come there, after all we took 7 hours to do a 250 kms!!! congratulate each other for making it there by day light. we clean our visors with water and tissue and gear up for a 300 km dark ride with 1102 on my trip meter.

Good news and bad news. the Good news is bangy 200 kms only n not 300!!!, yippie (distance doesnt matter but we all tired and not exactly looking for a night ride now ;) ) the bad news the 4 lane ends and its two lane again without a divider. turning out to be a one horrible ride back with the traffice not abetting and on comming trucks continuesly bambarding us with the lights. 60-70 is all we could manage. over taking every truck is a challange cos of the on comming traffic. literally hadda jump out of the road many times to save our lives cos of multiple over takin of busses from the opp side. they just don give a damn for 2 wheeler. this goes on and on. at one point the whole road was with the vehicles in our direction overtain eachother and i zipp through them. ohh wat a rush. but really spending long time on the bikes now. gettin tired and achy all over. take a break at dharmapuri. 8 o clock it is. Still the traffice in the same state. this being a major route goin south the roads full of it. night travelling in karnataka is much bettor with very minimal traffic. Raghu too royelly pissed off. Varun seeing many tough things all on his first ride.

9.10 in kaveripatnam. This is the place where the 'K' in my name comes. where my great grand ancestors moved out of this city to mysore. well i am now in the land of my origin hehe :D. k'giri 10 kms from there and atleast we are sure of 4 lane from here phew!! take a break at k'giri and 9.30 by the time to start on the last session. varun decided to make a bee line for home while me and raghu take it slow. raghu still giving me company. now its getting khoold. wanna stop and pack myself but that would loose us 15 mins so carry on. and the super highway is still painfull cos of the slow speed, waiting for each km to pass. i am at the right lane and get several honks. hey i am not at 110 as i am always here but doin only 80 so getoff to the left lane. see many a blades of new wind mills on the move. maaan these wind mills are enmours with the blades around 60-70 feet on long trucks may be more. never picture the size of em when u see it from far. there were lot of em. thre were also cops frantically moving round. well there seems to be an accident or sumthing. Finally at bangy. bid bye to raghu and at home by 11 with 1303 on the tripmeter. Took us egjactly 12 hours to cover 470 kms from munnar pluss 100 we did in the morning dats 570 for the day.

Wohav longest trip for me in terms of days, all 4 full days of it. Really thank the gyes for accomadating my runnin though i tried my best not to be a drag. Else i would have had to do boring runs to k'giri and tumkur to complete the runin. but now got to travel new roads, see new places and runin done too. dined on the best of the twisties i have seen so far. Really missed allepy being so close. but sure wanna go there again, with the bike in full form. i still needa make justice to those roads hehe.

Too bad for Sanjay and vicky to have taken the fall, but their spirits are still high. Biking is not just fun, but also has the potential for painfull long after effects. Thats the risk we take for our passion. wishing them a speedy recovery.