Making the most of a bad hand

This last ride did not quite turn out to be how we planned it. It’s exactly such rides that teach you a lot about yourselves as individuals and as a group, also gives you things to ponder over.

On the day things started quite promisingly with an excellent breakfast at a small joint on Kanakapura road. The idlis and coffee were both perfect and they set us up with expectations for a good ride.

Soon thereafter we turned off Kanakapura road on to the side-road which cuts across from Harohalli and goes to Jigni. This is a lovely stretch of road barring the slightly painful bit at the very beginning. As usual when we see a nice road we ride and then we stop and click photos. I think our group is essentialy a bunch of photography fans with a riding problem.

So, some photos later we rode on further down the road and came to a kind of fork. We whipped out the old mobile and hooked on to Google maps to figure out which arm of the fork made sense. This is how we discovered that we were way off from the actual path.

This ride had been in the offing for a number of days, we had planned to make the trip to Ancheti. It promised to be a lovely rip through thick forest cover. The route was mapped and shared over FB. Over the idlis we had discussed a couple of alternatives. Unfortunately, the point we were at, having spent a couple of hours on the road already, was at least 80 kms from the start of the forest cover. This did not look good any more. The constraint was that most of us had family commitments which meant we had to be home by afternoon.

Mentally we had billed this particular outing to be a forest ride. So, having figured that it was unlikely to be one, almost everyone was disappointed. We decided to ride forth anyway and figure it out as we went.

We were now making for a lake called Talli (yeah, sounds good right). However, we decided to take a diversion en route to a waterfall. This provided the best part of the ride through small back roads and then on to a complete mud path where we did our own bit of off-roading. Atul and Bipin showed us that Bullets can be used as dirt bikes, the way they stood in their saddles to ride through the mud patches.

The day was not ours though, having gone a fair bit along the mud road we figured that the waterfall was not in this direction at all. So we turned back.

On the way back we discovered an abandoned school, this required a bit of exploring. It was interesting to find a blackboard with writing on it, dated ‘2002’. We could not figure why this school might have been abandoned, the structure looked fine and in places there was still furniture on the premise. It certainly made for some good photo ops, something we would never miss.

From there we made it to the Falls alright but they turned out to be a major disappointment, to put it mildly. There was hardly any water, owing to the fact that the rainy season has just begun.

KSTDC have setup a nice restaurant over there, they serve a decent cup of tea of course and had a promising menu. Plenty of monkeys around for the simian inclined. The main part of the restaurant has a good seating space overlooking the forest. A nice place, if only there were water in the waterfall.

We then turned back and headed towards Bannerghatta from where we would head home. But then, this was to have been a forest ride. Right!

We took the opportunity to do a short rip through the Bannerghatta forest before making for home. If you have not seen this road, it goes to Ram Krishna mission and then on to Harohalli from there, it is a gem of a road. It is my favorite cycling route and provides a very relaxing ride on both bike and mobike.

We stopped again to click some nice snaps. As we were getting in to the stride for photos one of the forest rangers came and told us off. He said there were wild elephants around and that was no place to stop. Whoa!

So, through the forest we rode before heading home via Begur road, which was quite nice for most of the stretch too, much better than riding on Bannerghatta road. All in all we rode about 200 Kms and enjoyed most bits of the ride.

So, we set out for a forest ride and instead did a lake, waterfall and forest ride. That’s what I call making the most of a bad thing.

Anchetti remains to be done though, next time!

Given here is a map for the Anchetti ride, we will make this happen yet.

Riders and rides 
Shalin – Superlow Harley
Dev    – C500 Bullet
Atul    – C500 Bullet
Bipin   – C350 Bullet
Ashish – Avenger
Pankaj – C500 Bullet

Photo credits – Atul, Bipin and yours truly