Nandi Hills conquered again!

From the day since Harsha bought Trek 4300 bicycle, I had been reminding him for a ride to Nandi Hills. Harsha had done two rides to Nandi earlier with his Hero Swing. You should hear the story of those rides by him! Hero Swing is a heavy bicycle and you can imagine what would happen to one after he tries climbs Nandi on this heavy bike. And I had done a solo ride to Nandi last year. Now that he had Trek 4300, we planned for the ride. As I had recently sold my Thunder MTB, Harsha suggested that I should borrow Trek 4300 from Priya. Its slightly short for me, but I thought I could manage a single ride with it. Now we had another problem. Climbing Nandi non stop is challenging and interesting, but riding to the foothills of Nandi is boring. And ride back to Bengalooru after the climb is even more tiring. Harsha had solution for this too. For the recent Maharashtra trip we did, he had got his Swift fitted with a luggage carrier. Now plan was to tie his bike to this carrier, and another bike was to be put inside the car. In fact this is what helped us plan this ride.

The plan was to start early, at about 6 from Harsha's home, pick up the bike from Priya's house on the way, and start climbing at least by 8am. But we really ran late. We left his home around 7 after nice cup of coffee. Both of us were already feeling hungry. After taking the bike from Priya we drove towards NH7. The route we were supposed to take was Hebbal - Devanahalli - Nandi. There is one more route via Dodballapur. Due to the new Airport, The NH7 has been widened and work is still going on some stretch of it. The drive was smooth except for the a small stretch just before Hebbal. We stopped for break fast at a small junction just after ITC. We mucnhed Idli, wada, set dosa, etc,. Harsha munched an extra wada :). We reached the Nandi foothills by 9.50. We parked the car in front of a small hotel. We had coffee and requested the lady at the hotel to look after the car!

It had rained the previous day and weather was cloudy.
Soon, we took out the bikes and started check the air and other things. A group 3-4 people gathered around us, trying to touch and change the gears. We told them one should not try to change the gears when bike was stationary. We started climbing Nandi at 9.46 exactly. I told Harsha that I was already at the summit in the last ride. We really had expected the ride to be tough, without any warm up. As we started climbing, Harsha kept on telling me where all he had stopped for break in the last rides, even slept at one place! I kept on asking Harsha if we needed to stop at any point. Interestingly we were climbing slow and steadily with 1-2 gears. We never had to stop. I wanted to stop at curve number 33 and take pictures. But Harsha said we could take pictures on ride back. So we carried and slowly. Finally when I saw 1km mile stone, I was happy. After just two more curves we would at the top. We were at the stop, exactly at 10.40.

Harsha was really happy as this was his first non stop climb of Nandi. Usually the bicycle riders too are not allowed to climb further as there is a "no entry" rule for two wheelers! Some day I hope ride beyond this point. We drank cold tender coconut.

The tender coconut vendor was familiar with Venkatesh. He said he goes there often with foreigners. We sat for a while. Then took some pictures at the first entrance of the fort. Harsha clicked better pictures. On the way down, we stopped at one more point to click few more photos. We were at the foothills by 11.45 and were driving back to home by 12. We were excited to find that we could climb Nandi non stop, without tiring much. Soon Harsha was forming his next plan, to climb Nandi two time back to back, without break! Lets hope we get to do it. There is one more wish of mine. I want to fix a camera to handle bar and capture a video of the downhill ride. We had not planned for the same this time.

jack of many, master of none

I was speaking to a colleague of mine about my interests. He seem to have observed that my interests change often. According to him, I seem to have mastered the art of being a "jack of many, master of none". If one goes by the previous statement, one can say, I am master of one art at least :D. Even I agree with him. The reason why feel this is, I am trying to do many things without a concentrating on a single thing. Initially I used to sketch a lot. That is stopped now. Later I wanted to try painting. And I tried my hands on guitar too. Soon I seem to have lost interest. Now I have started bird watching! Lets see how far I hold on to it. The same was the case to blogging. The frequency of posts has reduced very much. But there is one thing which is regular. Cycling on the weekends. I am happy that I am able to stick to at least one interest.

3 fools, 2 smarties, a tiger and a leopard

As said in the previous post, I was in Mysooru over the last weekend. Same group of us who went to Chamundi hills, decided to go to Bandipur. Plan was to leave for Bandipur by 10 in morning, roam around and come back by 5 in the evening, as Subba and I were supposed return to Bengalooru in the evening . Previous day before going to bed, it was decided that we all should be ready by 8am, which I was sure would never be possible, as we had a nocturnal(read Sudhi) among us. I was a fool to get up by 8, get ready and wait for other lazy fellows. Somehow, 3Ss: Sudhi, Subba, and Seena managed to get ready by 12. Subba, Seena and I left early to visit Subba's granny at Nanjanagudu. A small boy who used to give witty answers to our naughty questions, made us forget how late we were. When asked "Bandipuradalli enide?"(what is bandipur famous for?), he replied "Bandi"! By the time we bid adieu to the kid, it was nearing 3 and Sudhi and one more friend of him, were already near Bandipur. We joined them by 4 and ate at a Resort(so called) till 5.45. I wanted to return, but others insisted that we should pay a quick visit to Bandipur and then go back. I reluctantly agreed. I didn't regret it later. I thanked them :)

As soon as we reached Bandipur and stopped to appreciate the friendly(?) deers, few other visitors told us that a Tiger just crossed the road near the small lake down the road. We were cursing our luck that we missed a life time opportunity to see a tiger in the wild. We rode on till the Tamil Nadu border. All along the this stretch, we could see lot of deers, sambars, a beautiful peacock too. While returning, I rode the bike fast as I wanted go back soon. Seena was pillion rider.

As I rode back, I was wishing that, that tiger would finish is his rounds, and again cross the road. To my astonishment, we saw a leopard crossing the road! It was at about 40-50 meters from us. It stood for a second and saw us and ran in the bushes. Even though I had read leopards were timid animals, I was scared, and applied the brakes. Seena shouted at me for that and asked me to go near to it. I rode on fast, as Seena turned to right side to see the leopard, turned back and watching us. Subba and Sudhi were way behind us and they missed sighting the leopard. We waited for them to join, and told them in excitement what happened there. They cursed their bad luck and we carried on. After riding for about 5 more minutes, Subba and Sudhi again disappeared behind us, as they were slow. And this time, there was a real surprise for us. A Tiger! A tiger was crossing the road. And it was closer than the leopard. Within 20 meters! Well, I really can't explain what Seena and I felt at that moment. We were excited and scared at the same time. Without our knowledge, legs started shivering! Again, I applied the brakes, this time some how I rode on slowly, and dared to turn right and look into bushes where tiger had gone in. We could see tiger walking away, slowly, like a king. I had never seen a Tiger in wild, that too this close, and imagine, we were on a bike! Subba, Sudhi and co, who were shooting(with camera, not with gun) peacock, joined us after the tiger disappeared. Again, we had to narrate the story in excitation to them. Do not ask for photos. Yes, I cursed myself for not carrying the camera :(

People go far safari and return without any luck. And we were very lucky to sight tiger and leopard withing one hour of ride. Recently a tiger got killed on Mysooru - Manandavaadi road. Now administration seems to be taking precaution to avoid such incidents. All along the Ooty road in Bandipur, there were photos of the dead tiger urging the drivers to go slow, so that they don't kill more of these endangered animals. Read in newspapers that the Manandavaadi road would be shut during night. Long live tiger!