Of hairpins and curves of the queen

It was a long weekend. Our plans at office got suspended because of a dropout and lack of enthu I would say. So I had nothing on plate fro 3 days other than preparing for my moms inspection visit along with my sis to my refugee camp ;-). The idea of spending 3 days without nothing was kinda really not what I had thought I d end up doing after working my ass off for so many continuous Saturdays :-(.I called up 2 of the fellow bikers Ive been to trips with.To my disappointment I found one was engaged with his friend and the other actually had started on one bike trip some 10 days back. To my astonishment, he was already in Cal with his bike. No,Its not Calicut,but Kolkotta as it now known. 6 days of ride,and he wasn't done till then. He had plans to go to Shillong and then back to Calcutta, not on bike though. After which he had plans to go to our very own Dilli on his bike. He must be in between that trip while I am typing this stuff out. Shocked about my learning's, I was almost committing myself to do nothing all three days. After spending most of the Friday, sleeping and doing nothing, my neighbors came in and told me that they plan to go to Mysore the next day. That did not excite me at all.So to spice up things a bit we discussed many other places around ,but all with least of common interest. While I was interested to go to Yercaud,my roomie wasn't. So this discussion and madness lasted about half an hour and at 10:30 in the night we decided that we all go to Ooty.Man, it was some discussion! :-). Anyways, things did brighten up for me with a thought of this drive. All the other members went to sleep as it would be an early morning for all of us.Without even realizing this, I kept on searching for articles and blogs for directions and travel tips on the net. By the time I was done with all that, it was already 2 in the night :-).

We got up at 0330 and started packing our stuff. We started off from our place at 0445 in the morning. First stop was to get some cash out of ATM. After which we headed our ways out of Bangalore. Got our babes some much needed refueling at Shell petrol pump on Mysore road. After this, we drove our ways out and the next stop was at Mandya.


I deliberated and prolonged the first stop so that we could cover as much distance before the morning madness. It was around 0630 when we hit our first pit stop at Mandya. Refreshed ourselves to a good cup of tea before we hit the road again. As the sun rose and was getting brighter , we reached Mysore at around 0730. This was a comparatively a longer stop as the 2 bikes were out of sync distance wise and required some distance reconciliation :-P. Thanks to our cell phones, we got back on track and started our journey out of Mysore.

After this our next stop was at Gundalpet at around 0900.We had our breakfast here and at around 0930 we started our journey again.I realized it was perfectly timed as the next 12 kms were full of potholes and most stress full in the whole journey. We labored through those 12 kms and reached Bandipur shortly after that. As we entered the national park, I was all excited with the idea of watching few wild animals in their own backyard :-). We drove very slowly averaging around 40-50kmph through the national park and all we could see was a group of langur's. That was kind of disappointing. As the national park territory came to a end, so did the Karnataka border and we were soon entering the Mudumalai tiger reserve area. We were stopped at the check post to ask if we were carrying some liquor in our bags, as if we d have told yes even if we had. :-P. But we were honest in saying no. ;-). A few kilometers ahead we decided to stop over for a cup of tea again. Here we saw two sign boards, one said Ooty 66kms and the other said 36 kms both in different directions. This got us confused. After some local consulting we decided that we take the shorter route. :-). I had read about the shorter route in blogs and stuff. So I knew something existed, but this stop was very crucial to figure out the exact point of deviation. It was around 1100 at that time. After the tea and slight refreshment we decided to go started over again. As we exited out of Mudumalai tiger reserve,we were thrown open to some place where the roads were narrow.You got to be careful while you are riding here as we figured out.The local vehicles hardly give you any space to ride on, and even push you off the road if need be.So to be safe, just avoid any muscle catching stunts on this road, and give way to them. After sometime things did improve and roads got easier to breath on as we raced ourselves ahead. Within no time we were climbing hairpins. Hairpin bend 36/36 it read and we knew already that this will be one hell of a climb. At about the half way stage, we stopped and decided to take few snaps alongside the board that read hair pin bend 18/36 to give our babes a breather. The last 3 km stretch is the steepest and my bike had tough time climbing. The stretch looked pretty flat to the eye, but it was deceivingly steep in its gradient upwards. At around 1200 we had conquered all the bends and entered the queen of hills. We drove through the pine forest into the city of Ooty. To our discomfort we found that it is the peak season and finding a room was a tough task. After some loitering around for an hour or so in which we saw the boat house thrice, we finally got a place to cool our asses off. After this a quick lunch and a relatively short nap, we kick started our roaming around Ooty. First we hit the boat house. One end , and presumably the more popular end was chaotic. Full of people with hardly any space to breathe. We had seen the quieter version on the other end, so we decided head to that place instead and did our boating there. There after we headed towards the botanical garden. One has to say, the traffic that we encountered in the city was as worse that I've ever seen in my life. Long serpentine queue of four wheelers. Unlike Bangalore though , these were really patient bit of people waiting in the queue for things to clear off. Maybe its the holiday mood that lets people take this stress in light vein.

Thank god we had two wheelers which were let to zip by without any fuss.We reached botanical garden and saw sea of people just thronging in. We decided to get ourselves a cuppa masala tea and chilli bhajji :-P b4 we dared to enter the severely crowded garden. Its the flower show time there and it was quite a spectacle to watch the few glimpses that we managed to see. After some relatively quick snaps, we decided to wrap this up and head towards the valley view point on the outskirts of the city. I was really tired and fatigued for lack of sleep by now. So I couldn't enjoy this bit of the trip as much :-(. Day 2 saw us venture out of Ooty into the beautiful city of Coonor.

The drive was breathtaking with lots of seductive curves and lovely weather to give you company.We visited dolphin's nose,lamb rock viewpoints during this stretch after which we decided to wrap our stuffs and head back home for lack of time :-(. We started our journey back at around 1400 from Ooty. On our way back, my roomie wanted to take few snaps in the pine forest and I wanted to take a snap right under the board which read hair pin bend 1/36 \m/.
During our decent we just turned off our engines and rolled down on our bikes. Reminded me of the child hood days when i used to play with vehicle tyres and the way I enjoyed watching it roll it down the slope. :-).We also happened to see a herd of deers while treading our way back through the national park.

Apart from a last mile glitch which saw my gear lever bend and few heated words exchanged, this trip was thoroughly enjoyable. We reached back home by 2300 and were all ready hit the bed ASAP. I realized I still hadn't done my cleaning bit before my mom came for the inspection the next day. So the night stretched on till 0200 for me before I could hit the bed, thanking my stars for giving me more memories to cherish. :-)