From one hill station to another, through tea gardens, plains and forests! Today was the most thrilling day for us on the Leg 2 of the GIR. A day full of lovely roads next to tea gardens, winding their way down to the plains of Coimbatore and then the little roads cutting across two wild-life sanctuaries, finally climbing to Munnar, nestling in lush green hills. Starting from Ooty at around noon, after a wholesome breakfast at the Guest House, we were greeted with dense fog as we wound our way to Kotagiri via the Dodda Betta road. Dodda Betta is the highest peak of the area and the steepness of the roads combined with the high altitude meant it was tough work for the Blazes. Nevertheless, slowly slowly we made made our way through superb hill roads, till I came across a curve, from where a tiny path was carved into a massive tea-garden. As it is, I had to stop for Sunny and the back up vehicle to catch up, and hence I decided to walk into nature’s lap and discover the area. There was a small stream flowing down from the hills above, and nothing but tea plants all around. No human being or a four legged creature to be seen around. In the meantime, Ashish rode in and stopped but Sunny, Sunil and the back up vehicle seemed to be quite far behind so I took a narrow trail leading up to somewhere. I had always wanted to do this in Ooty, walk up a tea-garden and get lost in acres of nothing but green tea leaves! There was a ting of fog and cold and that added to the virginity of the area. How I wish I could just put up a camp there and stay there for a week of so!
Anyways, I heard the Fireblade arrive and it was time for me to come back down and take some pictures from the point I was standing at. In the meantime, a dog joined us whom seemed to exciting to see us, he didn’t know weather to wag his tail or to cry. He kept jumping all around, circling us, climbing up the slopes and running back and what not! Finally we subsided his excitement by pouring some vodka mixed with sprite on a big leaf, which he drank without even noticing what it was and I think that did the trick and he sorta smoothened his actions!
Anyways it was time to continue and he headed down towards Coimbatore on roads, which were surprisingly good and allowed me to scrape the main stand of the Blaze around corners.
Coimbatore is known for its race track and there was no surprise that we found Speed 97 with ease and filled up the Fireblade with it.
It also starting raining at this time but carried on and found our way to Pollachi but enroute, the rains became very hard and we had to keep all our mobiles, wallets, Ipods and cameras under the seat of the Blazes. We also came across one of the biggest wind mill farms in India.
These gigantic structures were all over the place and had such an unreal feel about them. Standing next to them, on the highway seemed to virtual, and with tens of them all around, it seemed we were somewhere outside India! It had already started to get dark but we aimed to cover Munnar anyhow by night. It meant riding through dense forest area, infested with elephants and a lot more. We didn’t know the severity of the situation till we came face to face with this gigantic beast in the middle of nowhere! Ashish and I were leading with Sunny and Sunil following us, followed by the back-up vehicle. I didn’t know what to do, to turn back or continue. The elephant slowly moved away from the road on the side of it but due to dense vegetation I couldn’t figure out where he was. We decided to try our luck and accelerated from there as we passed him, he let out a loud roar, as if to warn us to stay outta his territory, or may be to cheer us for the ride ahead! What ever the thing, today was the most dangerous day for us too, as he would have easily flung his trunk and thrown us out of the road. We were so shit scared, we ripped as hard as we could through the darkness and bad roads, till we came across a check post, where the officials were both surprised and angered to see us ride through such an area in dark! Anyways after some explanation he let us go and we decided to ride in a convoy, with the back up vehicle between the four of us.
The rest of the ride to Munnar was through hilly roads, which were not too good but the last ten or so kilometers was done riding at 15-20km/h because of the dense fog. I have ridden in Delhi’s fog but this was too much, plus the narrow roads which kept on turning around and what not. Finally made it to Munnar by ten and I went out searching for a reasonable hotel and we managed to find one room for four for us for a very nice price. All restaurants were closed and that meant eating food at the road side dhaba. Sunil didn’t eat the Dosa as the curry smelled of chicken, I left the chicken curry as the pieces didn’t seem like chicken! What a day it was turning out to be- surrounded by truckers and rickshaw wallahs and eating food which we didn’t know what it was! There was no network for except for cell one and reliance and thankfully I was carrying my reliance phone plus our laptops run on reliance data cards. Anyways, we all very tired and the rest of the gang has already gone off to sleep. Tomorrow we ride to back waters of Kerala, hopefully in day time, but we have heard there is a fuel pump strike in whole of Kerala!
Total kilometers for the day – 276kms (point to point and roaming)
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