Saturday, May 16, 2009

Mountain Motor-biking - Destination Madikeri

Introduction
Tadindamool Sunrise as seen from the Slopes of Tadindamool Peak

The idea was to bike to Madikeri covering Dubare Elephant Camp, Tibetan settlement, Abbey Falls, Tadindamool and Bhagamandala. Initial head count indicated a record 20+ bikers, but finally just 8 showed up on 6 bikes as always. Yamaha FZ, Pulsar, Splendour, Gladiator, Unicorn & Victor.
All 8 Taken at Kushalnagar - Day 1

After a bit of confusion we started off quite late 0630 hours, the meeting point was Banashankri Temple. We stopped by for breakfast at Indraprastha Channapatna. By now the group had already broken down into 3 sub-groups. Vinay, Dinesh and Myself were way behind everyone else. 3 of Vinay's friends lead the way followed by Gururaj & Purushottam. On Mysore road we saw about 4 car accidents with atleast 3 cars involved in bumper to bumper crashes.

Dubare Elephant Camp:
Dubare Elephant Torture Camp

Our first destination was not so interesting. The place is over hyped with actually nothing much to see. There are a few elephants on the other bank, each time people wish to pose with them the mahout would poke the animal to obey. It was indeed a sorry sight. By the time we all moved out it was 1430 hours, we had to wait another 30 mins after a heavy down pour. We checked into a room at Kushalnagar after a lot of drama.
Dubare Elephant Camp Constipated 'Mamu'


Day 2 [2-May-2009]:
Tibetan Settlement:

Bylekuppe Prayers outside the Golden Temple

It was a long day, we started early morning back towards Tibetan Settlement visited the Golden Temple & 2 monasteries - Namdroling Monastery & Sera Mey Monastry (Little known but a good one).
Bylekuppe Sera Mey Monastry

Cauvery Nisarga Dhama
This is again an over hyped highly commercialised with absolutely nothing much to see or do... It's more or less a bamboo groove filled with naughty couples.
Abbey Falls:
The ghat section that leads to Abbey falls was a good one. The water level had receded, we took some snaps and hurried our way to Tadindamool Peak.
Tadindamool:
We started pretty late from Madikeri at around 17:30 hours, It was getting dark but the weather was pleasant and a very amazing biking stretch. While riding on the motorable stretch both Purushottam & Dinesh had a non-fatal fall. They decided not to bike over the rocky terrain and stopped soon afterwards. Gururaj and Myself went ahead kept going till we hit a cliff, at this point our bikes too got jammed.
Tadindamool Peak Unlucky 'Mamu' munching on a full seeded Mango without the pulp
We had scaled 60% of Tadindamool. We just parked our bikes near by the others joined us too and we camped near a water hole 200 mts from our bikes. Next morning we made it to the peak.
Tadindamool View from Campsite

Day 3 [3rd May 2009]:
Dinesh's bike got punchered descending Tadindamool. We had to bike 13 kms to have it fixed. Next was Gururaj's Bike in Madikeri. We had to cut down on Bhagamandala, by the time we started from Madikeri it was 1630hours. At Bylekuppe Gururaj decided he would halt at Mysore and drive back next morn. Dinesh and Vinay and his other friends were already way ahead of us. I decided to ride back faster and managed to get home by 20:30 hours.. I wasn't sure how I managed to overtake Dinesh and Vinay's friends. The ride back was amazing, it had rained too and the weather was pleasant.

Finale:
#1 Mountain Biking was fun!
#2 My bike gave a mileage of 30km per litre
#3 Very few repair hops are open Sunday
#4 It's a good idea to carry a spare tube, hand pump & tool kit on a biking trip.
#5 Hunsur Road stretch b/w Mysore & Bylekuppe is awesome.

4 comments:

Tejaswini Mathad said...

I am JEALOUS

Yadunandana said...

hey rohit, i'm also interested to join you ppl from next trek.. pl inform me on : yadunandana.r@gmail.com

Swetha Padakandla said...

Awesome!! :D
further treks let me know.. am interested too.. :)
can contact me on my id at swetha.padakandla@gmail.com

btw, nice pics..

cheers
swetha

Unknown said...

Hi There,

Nice and informative blog. Me and my wife are planning to visit Nandi Hills on our activa. I was wondering if the hill roads were safe to ride as I will be riding a gearless scooter. Did you guys switch off the engine downhill? Need some tips.

Regards,

Rao