A cool Coorg ride.

12.05.2007
A cool Coorg ride

Weather is still hot, but it was a cool ride to Coorg.
This ride witnessed lots of events and most of them were eye openers.

Cloud valley in Coorg, Uday's guest house is an old one restored (without losing the beauty) for guests. The feel of staying in a traditional home with homely food itself was worth the ride. Old coats, chairs and even the 'divan' -short in height, almost like a dining table, is retained as it was. In the first room (say, drawing room)the wooden stairs going to the wooden roof is a rare seen nowadays.

Atlest 10 times I feel I should comment on the food we had at cloud valley. Almost all the items had a traditional Kerala touch. The pork at lunch was simply awesome. The traditional veg items added the flavor. The dinner too rocked.

Let me just recollect the ride.
Day1:
Started from Bangalore in the morning, with lots of delayed pit stops, reached Coorg in the after noon. Kicker return spring went kaput on my bike. Thankfully got a bullet mech at Coorg and decently job was done in 15 min. The time of arrival at the cloud valley- 3:00pm wasn't the ideal time for lunch. But all were hungry and so nothing got wasted.

In the evening many of us got wet in the pouring rain. I was in the middle of a solo, round the villages ride and got struck somewhere when it started raining. The boy I was talking to, introduced himself to me as the son of Uday- the owner of cloud valley guest house. He just got disappeared to his house just before the rain started when someone called him from home. His name... oops I forgot. He goes to a school 30km away from home and spends lots of time travelling in the school bus.
Anyway he reappeared again just before I could start the bike and rush to a shelter.
Uncle, Uday is calling you , don't get wet and come inside.
Aahaa... Lucky Jo is Happy Jo now.
Rain poured for almost half an hour and I spent there talking to them, sipping the tea offered by Uday, clicking snaps of them, their dog, cow, rain... what else will I do..
Uday still remebers Prashi's Jawa he came in last time and asked me if he still has it.

When the rain stopped, I rode back to cloud valley and saw many wet souls and envy eyes on the way who were wondering how come this one still dry. I saw Moshaii who was on an evening walk with few others, who earlier asked me to get down from the bike and walk with them, now walking like a wet chicken.

RTMC rocked the night in its usual style. The guest house didn't have capacity to give sheltor to all of us. Some had to find sheltor inside sleeping bags.

Day2:
I got the plan in mind that I'm not going back to Bangalore without having a ride around there and visiting the Buddhist monastery.

Morning, after a tea, 5 of us left to take a ride around. I and Moshaii enjoyed the river crossing on bullet, Kam who joined us there and we had a ride on the other side of the river(stream). Beautiful experience, reminded me of the Kaveri Sangam (Mekadath) ride where we had the river crossing and ride in the forest.

After breakfast and the photo shoot out we left the guest house. Mr. Uday and other hosts seemed happy with our company.

I'm happy that I could visit the Buddhist Monastery for the second time (my first visit was around 3 years back). We, five of us formed a seperate group and headed to the monastery when others headed straight to Bangalore. The place is truly serene. The combination of red, golden and green color is a real feast to any photographer. Wish I had an SLR. Anyways my small digi did a decent job.

The return ride was eventful...
Had to witness a major accident, other issues on roads, many eye openers- co-ordination related...

A nasty fall by one of our pals and an inspiring escape without any injuries and his notes on the events- "The bird will fly again"...
Eye opener: This happened when I had little concern about protective gears other than a helmet, gloves and a jacket (some times I take that too off to beat the heat).
I have seen lots of accidents on roads. Heard lots of stories from friends about accidents of different levels- ranging from minor scratches to death. But this one, seemed a bit different- proved howuncontrollable an accident can be sometimes.
When the fellow riders on road side signalled for a stop, I didn't expect more that a usual regroup or pit stop on the way. While walking to them casually, seeing a bare back wheel rim, I smelled an incident, but never thought of anything serious. When someone asked me to have a look at the bike, only then did I see the vastness of the picture. A tube failure on the rear wheel at high speed on the Mysore road, bike hit the concrete divider and road (don't know how many times) and finally came to a stall with total damage to the bike, but minor injuries to the pillion and negligible scratches to the rider.

Learning:
1. Not having proper protective gears means taking a big chance on road.
2. Need improvements on co-ordination.

Before I wind up
Thanks to BabuMoshaii for the petrol shared from his bike when mine almost ran out and the nearest pump seemed unreachable with the reserve.
And I don't remember how many times he helped me push start the bike while riding with the broken kicker spring
Thanks to Chandra for transferring me the ride slot which was earlier booked for him.

Coorg Album