Wanderlust:bitten by Karnataka

As I sit to write the trip log, the only one word I can say about this is, "mind blowing". I started from Bangalore to Tumkur bit late on Saturday morning. At 10:00 AM I had my breakfast and was contemplating on which DVD's to rent for the day? Sujith called me at 11:30 AM and told me that the trip was on and his friends have arrived from Bangalore. Although he informed me about this trip last week, since it was tentative and no news came from him till Saturday afternoon, I thought it was off this time. Nevertheless, the unrelenting Om and Vignesh made this trip to happen, I am grateful to them.I asked Sujith and others to come to my home and by that time I thought I will withdraw some money from ATM. When I checked, all ATM networks were down. When I came back, Sujith, Om and Vignesh were already waiting for me at my home. We had a small chat and had a cup of tea for bonhomie and I packed my stuff. I reset my trip meter to zero, the clock was showing 1:00 PM and we started off. We filled petrol in an IOC pump at outskirts of Tumkur and wanted to reach Halebidu quick.Since the tarmac was pretty OK, everyone started to pull their machines hard. Om was sitting as pillion on Sujith's bike; I and Vignesh were riding alone. The fact that Sujith's bike has a 120 rear tyre and a good old pulsar engine, he started pulling away faster than we expected. Vignesh was in front of me and we were riding a bit relaxed.In an attempt to catch the front runner, we started ripping the bike and I overtook Vignesh and after a few curves I was able to see Sujith. He was riding at 100+ when I saw a big road hump and I braked suddenly, Vignesh who was at my tail never expected this kind of move and he pulled his vehicle to left and we both were able to stop with only contact with handlebars. Had Vignesh come straight, in to the hump, the trip was, well, over before it begin. After nearing Tiptur, we took a break and Sujith told that his rear brake did not work at the hump so he took it straight. Om complained that the rear shock absorber is not working. There was an enthusiastic RX rider who was attempting to overtake us. I was ahead of the pack and normally I allow people to pass to give their ego, a boost. This particular rider was cutting across and had no respect to other vehicles on the road. Since the tarmac was real good and with no oncoming traffic, I was allowing him to close on to me till my bike's tail and then I used to pull off. Clearly I was crossing 125 and I think the RX was not ported. So, he got tired of the game and fell back.So, we decided to take easy and whenever a stretch of clean tarmac was seen, we used to rip and were able to reach outskirts of Arasikere by 2:30.Then we confirmed that we should take a left turn from Banavara to reach Halebidu, in no time we reached there and the road was narrow but the bus drivers and others were kind enough to allow us to pass them. Some of them were rude too and made Sujith and Om to go off the road once.Around 4:00 PM we reached Halebidu and had a meal in one of the Hotel near the temple. I had only Idly-vada and other had their full meal. Took a couple of water bottles and went to see the temple.There were a lot of visitors since it was a weekend. I was really amazed by the construction of the temple. The carvings were done in such a precision that the facial expressions on the carvings were quite visible. Quite a lot of them were damaged by Muslim invaders; nevertheless there are a huge lot of them. I guess the invaders either felt ashamed or tired of destroying them. Lot of foreigners visit these temples and quite a number of guides are available for help. The surroundings are neatly maintained by the authorities and well, one of the cleanly maintained temples I have seen.We also saw dwarasamudra lake which is next to the temple. The lake is quite clean and was in refreshing blue colur when we went there. One more incident at Halebidu was that Sujith tried and tried to get the photo of a girl desperately but she was covering her face from her hands. Finally he managed to get “not so close” one. Nevertheless, it’s going to stay in our primary memory (read brain) and secondary(memory stick, hard disk, CD etc.)Later, we left to Belur to visit Belur temple. Dusk was easing on when we were at Belur. The temple is in real good condition and maintenance. There were scores of school children visiting the temple, clicking photos, roaming around, purchasing some items from their pocket money, giving trouble to their teachers during headcount.For most of the schools in Karnataka, a school trip means, Halebidu, Belur and Shravanabelagola. I bet the school teachers will be visiting these places at least 10-20 times during their stint.We saw the majestic temple, clicked few pics sat there for few moments and it was already dark. We had churumuri near the temple and started towards Chickmagalur.On the way Om bought a lid for himself since it was dangerous to ride without helmet and the weather was getting progressively chilled.Sujith fell back since he had a call and asked us to continue and he will be joining us. Chill was slowly getting in to my spine and in spite of the thick jacket, thug boots and full faced helmet I was shivering since I forgot hand gloves. I saw a qualis in front of me and due to the oncoming traffic's high beam, I stuck to the tail of qualis. He was regularly doing 100+ and was not going too fast so I was following him. He was real smooth on bad stretches so that I was able to make out that a bad stretch was ahead and I used to slow down. followed him till Chickmagalur and I stopped for waiting others. Vignesh and Om came in no time and Sujith also joined us after few minutes. I desperately needed a pair of hand gloves first. So we were entering M.G. Road and seeing all our riding gear and luggage, one gentleman thought we were new in town and told us that we were entering a one way road from wrong side and told us the alternative.First we found a corp bank ATM and withdrew some cash. Next we went to wintershop near K.M. Road and I got a pair of woolen and a pair of leather gloves.Om,Sujith and Vignesh too got theirs since Sujith's glove didn't cover his fingers and Vignesh's was already in a bad shape. I got my leather gloves for 175/- and woolen gloves for 65/-. It was a good purchase and it protected me in rest of the journey.We finalized the idea of halting at Moodigere, when asked about lodging there we got mixed reactions. The winter shop owner discouraged us from going there and told it's not good there and will be a better idea to stay in town. Also people told the road stretch from Chickmagalur to Moodigere is in bad shape. But staying at Chickmagalur was boring, so we thought that if the place is not too good to stay, we will come back to chickmagalur since it's hardly 40 kms from Chickmagalur.With the help of a policeman we took the Road and spotted a Hotel. We finished our meals and started towards Moodigere. There was no oncoming traffic. literally none. only the high beam was litting the road and the road was pretty ok if not bad. We were doing 70-80 kmph regularly and with the mercury falling, I had difficult time to open throttle. There was little bit of fog that started accumulating on the visor. I couldn't open the visor since the wind was chilling my bones.I wiped it regularly and was moving on. Meanwhile, we took a break near a junction point and had a photo shoot. It was absolute pitch dark once we stopped our bikes,It was nice to see the clear sky from that location with all the stars twinkling had a whole new world in them. The KSRTC buses plying in that region are real bad and the drivers won’t care for a road hump, leave alone a bad stretch. Do not ever get in front of the buses at night especially if you are negotiating a road hump or a pothole.We reached Moodigere at 9:14 exactly since I saw it on my bike when we parked in front of the Lodge. The name was Athiti Lodge and the Manager at first,was not too cooperative.He smirked at us when we asked for an extra bed. Sujith calmed him down by speaking in Mangalore Kannada for a while and extracted some information about the place.We saw the room and it was okay and clean. But switching on the fan was a definite no no since it has the dust accumulated from the bombs of World War 2.The hotel Manager informed us that hot water will be available only after 7:00 A.M. We hit the sack around 10:00 PM and Vignesh warned Sujith that he will kill him if he misses any of the “giris”.Next day early morning we went for a walk and it was so refreshing. We roamed around the estates and got in to the one owned by Poornachandra Tejaswi, son of great kannada writer Kuvempu. He passed away recently and some of his relatives stay there. I felt I was walking in the woods when I went inside. It took more than 2 hrs and we had a cup of coffee on our way back to the lodge and it was 8:30 when we reached there. Also Sujith was staring at a “pretty” girl standing in the bus stand. When he was staring at her intensely, he got got stares from her yezdi rider boyfriend/spouse/brother. He chipped in and didn’t want trouble in that place.All of us took a quick bath and left the lodge. Had breakfast from the Hotel which was on the groundfloor of the lodge. I had Rava Idly and plain Dosa and others had something similar like Om had Masala Dosa and rava idly, Vignesh had rava idly and plain idly and Sujith had the same.We started from Moodigere towards Chickmagalur, nothing eventful happened and we reached chickmagalur by 10:30. Ya, eventful in the sense that I saw few pretty girls waiting for the bus on the road; neither I could stop, nor click pics since we were running out of time. Sujith knew the route to mullayyanagiri and we started towards it after a quick break. Vignesh got some water bottles and we started for mullayyanagiri. Road was not great to ride often bumpy with full of potholes. After a few kms, there came a diversion towards mullayyanagiri which was 8 kms and bababudabgiri which was 16 kms. First we went to mullayyanagiri.We were lucky enough to get the dry roads. Had the road been wet, either we would’ve turned back or got stuck in the wet mud. Offroaders too will have difficult time if it rains here. The road was getting steep and curvy but offered some excellent scenaries. We were there at the top by 11:30 AM.Then we had the task of reaching the top through steps. Om being a half marathon champion had no difficulty in climbing at Sujith being ultra light was climbing with ease. Vignesh was too okay but I was sweating like a dog and took 3 breaks before reaching the top.At the top we had some surprise friends ( read 2 cats) which were not afraid of us and were roaming freely. The pujari performed puja and gave us the prasada. The other old man who was there offered us buttermilk which was ice cold and had enough butter in it. We savored the delicious buttermilk and clicked some pics. He also told us that they can arrange for shelter and food if we want to stay there for a night. They also told us that they will cook food if we tell them in advance. Then, it was time to move on to Dattapeetha.We left Mullayyanagiri around 1:50 PM and hoped to reach dattapeetha around 2:30 which was termed too optimistic by Vignesh, eventually it turned out like that..We were there at Dattapeetha around 3:00 PM and were greeted by not so pleasant welcome by some folks saying “Yeh alla ka jagah hai, yaha mat aao”, after seeing the vibhuti and kumkum I had on my forehead. Never gave a damn and started roaming around.The sight was beautiful and we clicked snaps there. Rested for a while and had full 300kms go..We started from hills around 3:45 PM and were at chickmagalur by 4:30. had dosa, idly and started off from chickmagalur by 5:00 PM.After this, there is nothing much exciting since everyone were ripping their machines hard and it got dark after reaching Hassan and I fell back. Vignesh, Om and Sujith went ahead. It was unbearable to see the high beam from oncoming traffic and there were few villagers who were riding cycles on Highway without reflectors. It was damn dangerous to speed. At chennarayapatna we took a break again and we reunited. Sujith noticed that his high beam was not working at Bellur cross, but he decided to get it fixed in Tumkur since the bulb given by the electric shop there was not suitable. We stuck behind a speeding Scorpio who was consistently doing 90, after sometime we caught another scorpio who was driving at 100 and followed him till Kunigal. Vignesh and Om decided to have their dinner on a Highway dhabha and proceeded towards Bangalore. I and Sujith started towards Tumkur , since he didn’t had the headlight, I was leading him and I lead pretty bad since I hit a number of big potholes and roadhumps, nevertheless reached Tumkur by 9:00, Sujith proceeded in to the city and I took the ring road and was back home in one piece by 9:15. what a helluva ride !!!!