My Trivandrum - Kodaikanal Bike trip

Let this be the beginning and not the end !

Trip Date : 21st Oct 2010

Some Teasers



If you had asked me 3 weeks ago about my plans for this trip I would have been flabbergasted to the point of laughing.

The trip was never on cards, even though Arun had expressed his desire to team up for a short biking trip within Kerala both of us knew that it would never transpire primary because I was planning a Sikkim\Bhutan biking trip, during the month of August \October.

Some Teasers



As fate would have it, for various reasons my Sikkim trip got delayed and finally I decided to call it off due to work commitments.

Now with Sikkim not happening I started to get restless and started to look for some other avenues to satisfy my hunger for some biking action, that’s when Arun once again expressed his desire to do a biking trip (his current package tour across Himachal with his wife was not going as planned)

Some Teasers



Slowly the jigsaw pieces came together and having finally decided to do a trip together, I got down to business of identifying the route; and off course hunting a rental bike for Arun in Trivandrum ( Arun being a NRI didn’t have any bike here)

After careful consideration Trivandrum – Tirumangalam- Kodaikanal – Kumily – Peermade-Vagamon- Trivandrum route was selected.

Map View



Terrain View



In a sense I wanted to see how well the Unicorn will handle over a long trip which involves – good as well as bad roads, little bits of off roading, serious narrow, twisting & broken up Ghat sections with its sharp switch backs and off course identifying its comfortable top cruising speed.

These would be valuable inputs for my proposed month long Sipti – Ladhak trip that I plan to do sometime in near future.
Well once the route was planned I paid more attention to getting the rented bike, the second bike was important as it would have been very uncomfortable for 2 people to travel on my small bike.

Arun was insistent on having a bullet, as he was used to that class of bike and as a devote malayali he foresaw no problems in getting a rented bike in Trivandrum.

Unfortunately for his illusion and my frustration, Trivandrum known as a tourist hub (Kovalam, Poovar and Varkala beaches) strangely enough didn’t have any bike renters- can you believe it.

Couple of bike renters in Kovalam were not interested in renting bikes out to Indians (no wonder why majority of tourists are giving Kerala a skip after their first visit – if Kerala is serious about its tourism then it needs to shun the white goddess worship)


Anyways despite weeks of bike hunting, I was no closer to the goal than I was at the start.

I did manage to find two renters who were willing to rent to Indians; however both their bikes were in garage for major repairs and the out dates were too close for comfort.

Overall the trip looked headed for disaster even before it started and I was close to calling it off.

Arun had reached Tiruvalla (his native place in Kerala) by this time (19th Oct) from his Himachal trip and was all eager to know the trip status since his Himachal trip was below his expectation.


Seeing his eagerness I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I planned to call it off , so I decided to give it one last try, that’s when this idea of getting the bike from Cochin struck me – with couple of professional rental service there, I knew it might work out though at a higher cost.

Discussed the matter with Arun in detail who welcomed the suggestion, the plan was for Arun to visit Cochin, check out and negotiate the bikes and then drive one down to Tiruvalla. All this process went very slowly much to my increasing frustration as I saw another well planned trip going down the drain.

Now that we were planning to take Arun’s bike from Cochin, I had to make slight modifications to original plan as Arun was not too keen to drive up till Trivandrum on his own, so I decided to meet up with him at Tiruvalla.

The new plan

I will drive upto Tiruvalla on 21st Oct and from there we will officially start our trip on 22nd Oct.

This time it will be Tiruvalla- Peermade, Vagamon, kodaikanal route , where we will visit Vagamon before reaching Kodaikanal.
As per the previous plan, we were to travel through the hot Tamil Nadu during the start and wind up through cooler Kerala so that we are refreshed.

Map view



Terrain view


The route consisted of some places that we had been planning to visit for a long time; and along with that I had chosen a route to do some advanced terrain handling testing of my recent accusation – the Honda Unicorn

But now we had to do it the other way and I would have to drive back via Tamil Nadu alone since Arun planned to go to Munnar from Kodiakanal and then head to Cochin to drop off his bike ; whereas me being on a tight schedule would have to head straight back to Trivandrum from Kodai.

Felt a bit odd, since now in the present scenario I would be riding alone for half the trip – still I had no major issues as I have ridden alone in past ; so finally the plan was sealed .

I had given my bike for servicing on Monday evening (18th Oct) just incase the trip transpired but not before giving the mechanics a clear threat to ensure that the bike is serviced properly , that seemed to have paid off because the garage called me up to notify my bike was ready for inspection and testing on Tuesday morning itself hahaha – went for the inspection and realized that even though they had done a good job, they had forgotten to replace the broken left indicator retainer- half an hour saw that finally getting fixed.

On the bike’s front had some doubt regarding the front disk brake as it was making a lot of noise and was not stopping the bike completely – the head mechanic assured me that it was due to recent wash and it will work properly as soon as the water dries off.- so the matter was settled.

Next activity was packing my Saddle and Tank bag on the evening of 20th October in anticipation of the big day if it did transpire, I had decided to carry majority of the stuff (san thermals\ spare petrol \ spare parts) as I was using this trip to not only test the bike but also my packing style and readiness for a Himalayan expedition. Being a four day trip this was the right occasion to understand basic but critical elements so crucial to long trips like packing.

I must say I was a bit skeptical while doing the packing as I majorly expected the trip would have to be called off as Arun had still not got the bike, however I decided to be ready just in case the trip materialized since I wont have any time for packing after that.


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Kodaikanal bike trip part 3

After a short halt it was time to move on

 

 

We hit Kumily at around 11:30 am (approx 120 km from Tiruvalla), since we were riding apart we got caught up and separated in Kumily traffic – while arun halted at a restaurant I kept on riding and was soon surprised to see Kumily exit post.

Few phone calls to arun and soon I caught up with him at the restaurant he stopped at.

Lake Queen seemed to be a big hotel with a vegetarian section in ground floor ( Ayur cafe) and an AC restaurant in first floor from the parking spot – from the main entrance I guess AC restaurant comes in ground floor.

 

Don’t know why the hotel was called Lake queen as I dint see any lake nearby but there were few other hotels called Lake shore and so on – so I assume there might be a lake nearby.

With Thekady nearby majority of the tourist prefer to stay in Kumily as the accommodations are cheaper than Thekady.

The food was affordable and good, while Arun had masala dosa I stuck to idly sambar which somehow was a rare commodity in Trivandrum- even if you get idly sambar it wont be dipped in sambar as we are used to eating.

At the restaurant Arun showed me his bike documents as he was concerned about border checking - got a bit apprehensive glancing through his insurance papers because there was no validity date mentioned on it - probably because it was a commercial bike . Anyways there was nothing that could have been done so hid my apprehension and told him the docs were good to go - there was no point worrying him.

After a 20 minute break we started towards our next point Theni which was around 60km away , plan was to have lunch from there and then push towards Kodaikanal which was approx 120km from Kumily


It was descend all the way from Kumily and the roads leading out of it was in bad condition, forcing us to go slow especially Arun who I suspected was feeling a bit lethargic and sleepy after a good delayed break fast.

I was getting a bit worried as we had a long distance to cover including a climb up Kodai ghat section however the bad roads wasn’t really favorable.

Few kilometer after the descend we hit a crowded town, and the most standout aspect of this town was its traffic light which was RED as well as Green, Arun and me were confused as to stay or go because half the traffic was stopping and the other half kept going – somehow from the looks of people there it seemed like a normal phenomenon - pheeew weirdly strange.

Couple of kilometer after that town the road suddenly became awesomely straight; though the tarmac was not really smooth it was good enough with hardly any traffic to let us rip. Soon we were ripping past 80 kmph and at times found myself at above 90s

something I had never done and enjoyed immensely – at this rate we should make up for the lost time and may end up gaining some time. though we didn't discuss it I am pretty sure that this was one of the moment Arun really enjoyed and I suspected he did hit 100 at certain times

 

And apart few occasional stops as Arun was cramping we did make good time, As I realized later the seat of TB was very hard and the fact that he was not really used to such a long drive may have contributed to his occasional cramps – but the big man did well to keep up the momentum though I suspected he was a bit more uncomfortable than he admitted.

Taking a well deserved break
 

One of the big attraction of this section was a spell binding paddy field, we chanced upon it quite by accident when we took a detour to try and find an access to a beautiful skimming waterfall that we saw from road.

Though we couldn’t find an entry to that waterfall we did came upon this sheer beauty – which could not be explained nor could any photo do it justice

 

 

Glad that Arun forced me to take this photo

 

Finally after a brief photo session, we forced ourselves to bid good bye to the paddy field and move on - had there been an accommodation option I am certain we would have taken it – it was that beautiful.

Arun was a bit surprised to find such a lush field in hot and dry Tamil Nadu however for someone like me who has seen much of India it was not really that astonishing but the sheer beauty was unmentionable

my bike at the splendor
 

the photo doesn't do justice to the beauty
 

 


Our plan was to stop in Theni for lunch but the town was so crowded and congested we decided to push forward and try our luck in finding a roadside dhaba – my idea was that every km we went further in search of dhaba the lesser the distance between us and our final destination for the day (Kodaikanal)

Strangely we didn’t find even one proper restaurant or dhaba enroute and kept going.

 

One major irritant factor were those big overloaded autos who will drive slow in the middle of that awesome road and wouldn’t give you space to overtake despite numerous honking.

Pretty soon I lost my patience with them- cant they understand that they are slower than a cycle?

 

 

By now we had started to take things a bit easy as were under the impression that this road will go on and we may have just 10-15 km of Ghat section climb. Imagine the shock we received when we arrived at the base of the Ghat section to find that 48km of the remaining road was purely on Ghat section.

Reached the base of KodaiKanal by 4pm – we have to climb to the very top of that mountain – that’s where Kodaikanal is- wow that’s a looooong climb!!!!

 

We soon shifted gears as much as possible in ghat section and tired to make up time once again as it was already 4 pm and we had to reach the summit before night fall.

 

 

 

Had fun riding through the twisties as in some areas we were able to maintain speeds of up to 50 kmph safely however then there were sections where every 10-15 meters we had to gear shift, which kind of got irritating.

 

 
Had to navigate this unexpected Slush Monster – thankfully we passed through with no major issues- though Arun’s brand new lactose shoes got real dirty- he had to sacrifice one of his socks to clean it up later guess he was afraid his wife finding out as it was her present.

 

As soon as we reached the sliver cascade waterfall few kilometers before Kodai - we were literally surrounded by agents canvasing for hotels/resorts.


 

This waterfall comes immediately after the Kodaikanal entrance gate\toll booth and I believe is called the Silver Cascade.

 

 


Since we were anyway in search of a good accommodation, we gave a ride to an agent named Dravidium who was going to show us a good property with an excellent view with garden in front called Kodai Gate.

This property is approximately 2 km before town and on the roadside, the access to this property is through a steep incline bylane where my bike struggled for the first time, anyways made it to the top and the first thing we noticed was no garden haha

The view was good but there was no proper sit-out or balcony to enjoy the view and at around Rs 1200 per room we felt it was not worth it.

So we left the place and decided to go down to the town for a better accommodation, we were in search of a cottage like accommodation which has a decent garden in front and a good view of the valley.

By 6 – 6.30 we entered proper Kodaikanal town, and started to bike around the town in search of an accommodation fitting our need without any luck.

Finally we decided to bike down to the lakeside where we had Kodaikanal version of bhelpuri which was pretty tasty considering the weather was getting real cold and that too pretty fast.

Arun then called up his friend in Saharja who had studied in Kodai and still knew some people there, he promised to get back with a reliable contact.

No callback came for more than 30 minutes and now engulfed in cold darkness we decided to head back to Kodai Gate hotel.

As luck could have it Arun’s friend callback at that time and gave us the contact detail of a guy named Ganesh , who had an Homestay near to the observatory.

A quick call to Ganesh to get the directions and off we were, and boy was it cold- I had anticipated some cold but this was way above it probably due to the recent rainfall in Kodaikanal.

Both of us were in summer clothes and had not bothered to pull out the sweaters from our bags, Thanks to my riding jacket I got some warmth but both our hands and finger were literally frozen solid.

Since Arun had forgotten to bring any woolens other than sweater I loaned out my woolen gloves to him, I was hoping my Twister gloves will be sufficient to handle such weather but what a shock – I felt as if I didn’t have a gloves on – My hands were exposed to the elements as badly as Arun’s were.

That’s when I was seriously considering the sensibility of buying this gloves.

To be frank apart from the knuckle protector I really don’t see any practical purpose of atleast using Cramster Twister – atleast it was a good wake up call ( lesson 2 – need better fleece glove for Himalayan circuit )

In Freezing cold ( and I literally mean freezing cold – I am used to Shimla and Ladhak and this was equal to that maybe due to the month and rainfall) we met up with Ganesh and his friend who arrived to pick us up on his Avenger.

Luckily the homestay was not far away and though it was not luxurious at Rs 800 for a 2 bedroom setup- it was a nice and decent bargain.

Once we had settled down and it was time for the most important mission of the day (from Arun’s point of view) poor fellow had gone without any Alcoholic drinks for the entire day and the moment we were settled in the homestay – we took Arun’s bike and went in search of a wineshop.

Amazingly it seems Kodai has only one wine shop (near to BSNL office) and boy was the place smelly and full of dirt. Got an overpriced pint of vodka and headed back into the cold in search of a good restaurant for our dinner.

Some searching around for a good restaurant found us at Hill Top restaurant – a nice place to have good veg and non veg food with over friendly staff – got the food parceled and went back to our homestay.

Had a good relaxed drinks & chat session, however by 10pm we were dozing off so decided to hit our bunks– guess we were more tired than we thought

Tomorrow around Kodaikanal

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