To Udupi

28th Sept:

Finally the wait for the Goa ride ends, I come back early from office - take the Thunderbird to RE brand store for getting the last minute lubrication etc. done - purchasing of all the spare parts is done. I have tested Rajesh's thunderbird over two days and I am happy with its condition.

I ask the mechanic there to change the headlamp with a halogen bulb. He changes it and I test it - Perfect for the highway! And in fact in the ride to come I would be reaping the benefits of this strong light. Nothing so special though - its a 12v 35/35 bulb - but emits double the light than the ordinary 12v 35/35 bulb.

I come back home, remembering the list of all the things I would need on the trip. The list is endless but thankfully I am not worried about that - I have cramster saddle bags with me :)
Pack all the stuff in poly packs - I know it would rain throughout the tour - weather forecast.
All done, I go to my bed and set up an alarm for 3:45 AM. Have to be there at Mekhri circle at 4:45 AM to catch up with the rest of the Bull gang - Jayan (Machismo), Shashi (Machismo) & Praveen (TBird). We'll be meeting with the ZMA gang (Parvez & Vaas) at yashwantpur Shell petrol pump and with Prashanth (P 150) at Kunigal. Done for the day - good night it is!

29th Sept:

3:45 AM:
The alarm wakes me up and I call up Vaas - he's already up. Call up others as well - everyone is up except Parvez. I keep on calling but he does not pick up - I know he will have to be on his own and catch up with the rest of the gang later. I finish up the morning routine.

4:25 AM:
As I start getting out of my place Vaas calls up. He has got a flat tyre. I ask him to wait for us to call him when I meet Jayan. I take out my bull, one full kick and it roars up to life. I keep it on idling for about a minute meanwhile taking the odo reading on my mobile - 10757.5 Kms. Time to start the journey. The engine sounds perfect and I put the bull in first gear and start for Mekhri circle.

4:48 AM:
I reach Mekhri circle, nobody else has arrived. I try calling Jayan and Shashi and don't get any answer. Think they must be riding. I wait.
I see a light coming from the right side - but no - its some pulsar light. Keep waiting.
Few minutes later Jayan tells me that he's waiting for Shashi at the brigade.
An approaching thumper indicates left and I know its Jayan and the rest of the bulls - Say hi to all and we start towards Yashwantpur. We stop in front of Indian oil petrol pump. Jayan comes and asks on what we should do about Vaas's puncture - I say lets repair that, otherwise it will be too late for him to wait on the puncture shops to open. Jayan stays back to get the puncture done, I call up Prashanth to tell him that we'll be reaching Kunigal in another 45-50 minutes.
Stop at Shell petrol pump - ask the attendent to tank up - the bill comes at 720 Rs. I check the air and make a 20/30 pressure. Its around 5:30 already - we start towards Kunigal - Shashi leads the way, me and Praveen follow.

Smooth stretch to Kunigal and we find Prashanth waiting the "Kunigal 2 Kms" milestone along with his father - we greet him and he wishes us luck for the journey. Prashanth leads the way to the chai shop. We order tea, and a few mins later a loud goldie thump tells us that JSR has also reached. One more tea ordered, cigs lighted and he updates that he was unable to get the ZMA brakes off the wheel - so Vaas will be starting late. Its the 5 of us for the next 200 kms at least.

The tea stall is just in front of the Mallya's horse breeding farm. As Jayan goes for a leak near the farm - shashi cracks a joke "the farm guys are directly going to hand him a horse, seeing his riding boots & jacket"!

6:45 AM:
Time to continue our journey - the next stop is for breakfast at a Kamat restaurant somewhere after Chennarayapatna. Shashi leads the way and we follow, Jayan is sweeping. On the way I find that Jayan and Praveen are nowhere in the rear view. Anyways, no probs when Jayan is around - I suspect that Praveen had a break down and Jayan is helping him fix that. When we stop at Kamat I come to know that my suspicion was correct - Praveen had been ripping and in the process his accelerator cable broke - Jayan repaired it and they were on their way to catch up with us at the breakfast. Meanwhile unable to contain our hunger I and Prashanth order first part of our breakfast :) and after that we wait for Jayan and Praveen to order our second round.. They reach in another 20 minutes. Second round over and we proceed to the lawn, taking the tea with us - After the tea/Cigs time for the first group snap - JSR is carrying his tripod so all of us (Me, Shashi, Prashanth, Praveen and Jayan) squeeze in the same picture.

10:00 AM:
Its around 10 AM now - time to get going again. From Hassan we will be taking Belur - Charmadi ghats section to reach Ujjire and Beltagandi - later followed by Manipal and Udupi - our final destination for the day.

10:30 AM:
Good roads end, when we enter Hassan, and as soon as we start on our Belur stretch the roads become amazingly good and riding on these roads becomes refreshing. Ripping session starts, JSR pulls the slower riders by overtaking them first and then pulling them ahead to get ahead of him. I take a seemingly smooth bend at 90ish speeds - Oh my God!! I have been through this road!! This was the same turn which I managed to cross in 90+ speeds on my CBZ in my Kemmanagundi trip, same turn same rider only that I have a bull this time - thumping all the time. I have felt this awesome power in the college days and I am an absolute fan of the Royal Enfields - I love them all :). Few more kilometers and the spot stops - so does all the others. Photo time :)

Oops, I forgot to mention about the ZMA guys - they started together from Nelamangala almost two hours after us (At arnd 8:30 AM) and they were on their way - We call them - Parvez is not reachable, Vaas answers and tells that he is trying to keep up with Parvez, who is nowhere to be seen.

Yeah, karizma is capable of covering up - so we ride a bit slower and proceed - Have another fuel top up somewhere near Belur (I am not sure about the place though) and then we proceed to out of it to take a break. And as with the breaks - a photo session carries over the snacks/cig roung. We've covered around 220 kms of the distance for the day, almost the same distance remaining.

From here onwards some of the twisties start.

I like curves. On the roads ... too :D!

Miles go by, slowly we proceed. Now the bad stretch starts. Speed reduced still further, the beauty around is breathtaking - all of us are riding slowly but steadily, maintaining the positions and going on.

The beauty with motorcycle touring is that you feel more of everything - the force of the winds, rain, mud, sweat, enjoyement. Group riding is still more refined - you are travelling, so are the other bikers - you become a part of the group - be together to celebrate the beauty of the nature & be together to cope up with a problem. It is an unsaid brotherhood. True everyone cares about themselves the most but still in a group ride its different - United is the spirit.

So, we carried on the bad stretch, and found a beautiful location to relax and have a photosession. No signal here so we are clueless about the ZMA guys, as per the last update Vaas was the last person and Parvez had gone ahead of him. We place our bikes in a parallel formation, just as we are done with this we see a cloud of dust and a Yellow ZMA going on high speeds on bad roads! Oh yeah, this is Parvez - All of us shout his name hoping he sees us, and he does - takes a turn to join us, and places his bike in the formation.

I lie down on the grass and relax. Prashanth clicks a snap - upside down!

Parvez has had a fall on the bad stretch - he was trying to put into practical the stunts seen on AXN but he fell down somehow. He says he's ok, but we insist on the first aid - the wound on his hand is cleaned and he's happy with that now. Couple of photos & off we go again.


Clouds are getting darker now, we see a view point in a turn and stop there to take some snaps - sound of flowing water from a nearby spring are tempting us to get down and look at the stream but a couple of photos and we restrain ourselves from doing this. We do not have the luxury of time, as it is already around 1:30 PM!

Now the Charmadi ghat section begins. If you want to test your riding skills - ghats are one of the best for that - riding on ghats is amazing. I have done wonderful ghat rides on CBZ and ZMA but bull on the ghats was for the first time - Yes, Bull rocks! On the ghats as well. I had a nice time riding my bull. Jayan and I were very ahead of the others, so Jayan signals me to slow down and we wait for others to catch up.

Few minutes more and the rest of the riders catch up with us, we have a small leak/cig break and a photo session. Not wasting too much of time here as the ghat roads are too tempting :).

Time flies by and ghat section disappers, the roads are good and we make it to Ujjire. Okay! Time to stop for lunch, we find a decent looking restaurant and go inside - now that we have got signals we contact Vaas to get the updates. He's crossing the Charmadi ghats section.


Lunch ordered, lunch done. Tea ordered, tea done. No sign of Vaas.

Wait...

Wait for him...

More wait...

Finally he reaches.. Its around 4 o'clock already and he doesn't want to eat anything - we force him to drink a juice and carry on for the rest of the journey. Few meters on and it starts raining - all of us stop to don our rain gear. And carry on.

I take the lead and start accelerating - Parvez is following me head to tail. All the turns, all the straights we carry on. Sometimes we stay meters ahead of others and then I signal Parvez to slow down, catch up with the rest of the gang and we carry on..

Rain and twisties and the jungles - everything is very beautiful and believe me riding in such a location with rain and sun is amazing. We carry on riding and by the time we reach Beltagandi it has stopped raining - we stop for a tea break and I convey the progress to Prabul and Shankie. Shankie and Panwar have started and they will be halting in Tiptur/Arsikere to resume their journey in the morning. Prabul will start with Vimal in the morning.

All set & we go towards Udupi, Me and Parvez ahead of others. Reach Manipal in good time, it has just started getting darker and we stop and wait for the others. Rains have stopped and we take off our rain gears. I thought we'd get to see many chicks in Manipal but alas couldn't see much! Damn those colleges!

Rest of the gang catches up and we proceed to Udupi in one group - find ourselves a hotel - park our motorcycles there. Odo reading: 11188.2, its 7 PM now.

Dinner & spirits are high.

Enough of time to sleep as the TVM guys will be joining us latest by 10.30 in the morning. So plenty of sleep, sleep at around 11:00

Photo credits: Jayan & Prashanth- Thanks for sharing guys :)