The Background
It’s been a while since I took a proper holiday. My previous “holidays” were all associated with going home to Vellore and spending time with my dad. If it wasn’t Vellore it’s just chilling at home in Chennai to usually clean up my house as I would have had some guests over at my place.
And now since my W day was fast approaching, I had planned on doing a ride – solo of course prior to the wedding.
RTMC - Bangalore’s resident bullet club was planning its 8th anniversary in the lush hills of Wayanad in Kerala and so I planned on riding out before hand in Kerala and wind up meeting the boys in Wayanad and ride down back to Chennai.
However, over an off beat conversation with Smitha and Brijesh – 2 of my closest friends and biker buddy (Brij of course!) we realized that we had some plans in common and there it started – the planning for a week long holiday in Kerala.
Due to Indian holidays, we found out that if they (I work Indian holidays – actually I work all the time!)took 3 days off we would get a total of 9 days including weekends so they were planning to go to Kerala to do some much needed family visits and so I decided to jump on the bandwagon and have a combined trip till they split up to meet their families. We would meet up finally at Wayanad.
The preparation
And so it started, planning, preparing, getting rooms booked, they getting their itinerary finalized, me getting it tentatively organized etc. My preparations were more in terms of the ride - got some riding shoes as the last pair I had were ruined at my last crash! , got mesh Fieldsheer jackets, riding pants, got a one piece rain coat as I had been wanting that for some time, bought a Cramster saddle bag, tank bag and a hip pouch and then decided to get my bike done up a bit as well. New front fork springs, gas shocks, air filter, wash and general service finally winding up with an 18 tooth front sprocket to see if that helped on the endless plain roads I would find.
We were supposed to leave on Saturday Morning and till late on Friday the bike was not done yet! I was starting to get tense as the problems were with the brakes. Anyway – to cut a long story short, I finally got it done and after some dinner and shopping with friends I was all set to go! Reached home past midnight and slept immediately after speaking to Brijesh and telling him to carry on as I may not be fresh enough in the morning.
He dutifully woke me up and 0345. I spoke to him and promptly went back to sleep. Woke up at 0500, spoke to him again and they were just leaving. I woke up, had coffee and started packing. What I thought would take 20 minutes went on for an hour! The electronic stuff I had was the craziest! – Camera, Phone, blackberry, Laptop (I have to stay connected with work), I pod and chargers for all of these!!! Anyway – finally got it done, geared up and was ready to go!
The Ride
0650 and I was all set to go. Brijesh and co were 100 K in front of me. Had a rather uneventful journey till I was out of the city. Met up with Prabhu (one of the fellow madras bull friends – he was on his way to someplace near Neyveli to pick up his family. He was driving a black esteem and I did not recognize him at first but it was good riding behind him as he was like a pacer to me. I usually overtook him at the tolls and finally we split up.
Was solo till Trichy and the roads were awesome, bike was awesome, not too hot and it was an awesome ride!(yes – I know too many Awesomes!)
Bike was doing good speeds and I was able to maintain a steady cruising speed of 100 on the open stretches.
1130 – I reached Trichy, gassed up and gave Simmrit (yet another Madras Bull friend – stationed in Trichy) and he said that Brijesh and co were with him so we finally met up. Chatted for some time and then carried on.
Dindigul was next re-group, just near the turn off to Kodai. We stopped, stretched legs and carried on again. Theni saw me having a puncture – right in front of a puncture shop so got that fixed and headed off to Bodi – where Brij and co were waiting, As I was heading there – got a text saying that it was raining from Smitha so finally got to wear the new raincoat – yay! (From a review perspective – it was awesome!)
Met up with the guys a few hairpin bends down and then started our rather slow climb up. Slow as we were enjoying our trip up stopping as often as the scenery enchanted us which meant that it was almost every 5 minutes! Finally reached the border on an awesome highway, had a cup of chai took in the scenery for a while and then crossed the border.
The roads were not that great in comparison, the view made up for it though. An exciting ride awaited me, mist, rain, low visibility (I mean really low – I was actually a guiding bike for a couple of cars who were too scared to make it!) Stopped a few times for tea along the way – when I was waiting for Brij to catch up – he had nicely told me to carry on as he would be coming slowly. Finally reached Munnar after a really awesome! (There I go again!) ride. We were told to meet an auto driver who would guide us to Ranger Woods- a home stay which would be home for the next couple of nights.
The ride there was scary yet exciting as we had reached the end of the journey – a good 20 minutes from Munnar town and we were there finally – to home – ness! – Coffee, hot water, decent rooms and then food.
The day ended with us playing cards and chilling out and I won a game finally! T'was then good night to the world and sleep!
The Touristy Stuff
Sunday dawned very well with the sun actually shining through the clouds and warming everyone up. We woke up to a traditional coffee and south Indian breakfast of idli, dosa and chutney. We got ready soon after and headed off aiming to hit a couple of the local tourist places along the way.
On the agenda was Mattupatti Dam and top station and any other spot on the way. Unfortunately, it being a long weekend and a Sunday, it looked like every other person in Munnar had the same idea! We were stuck in traffic for a long time as the dam also served as the main road which meant everyone was on it, stopping and taking photos etc just like we did.
So we thought that we would keep going and then on the return journey we will stop at all the good places we have seen on the way up and continue taking the photos.
The road to top station was weird – we were in Kerala, we had to go back into Tamil Nadu as this was there and the funny part was how the roads leading to top station were unusually( for TN) horrible. There was sludge, mud, puddles, streams of water, pot holes and no tarmac for quite a while. Finally reached there and then had to take a trek for about 20 minutes to reach the spot. Thing was it was so cloudy that we could not see anything major, but slowly in a bit, it cleared up and we managed to take a few photos. 
We did the usual sightseeing stuff and then on the way back to where we had parked the car(with great difficulty owing to the huge number of tourists/vehicles) it started pouring, Thankfully one of the others had had the presence of mind to ask our hosts at the home stay for umbrellas which we then took out. 
Finally reached the car and headed back into town (did I mention I was on the car and not the bike?) Again a few traffic jams on the way. This time around - we found time to stop at one of the view points and took some really nice snaps that really dont do justice to the actual views. The next day was going to be a trip to kumarakom.
Watch this space.
