A bike ride to Coorg and back

Another long weekend was coming up and I didn’t want to stay in Bangalore. I didn’t want to go to Mangalore because I had just returned from there 5 days ago after a 2 week vacation. So, as usual, Ramesh and I thought we'd ride somewhere. Our options were Coorg, Madumalai, Yeracaud and Wayanad. When I asked everyone I knew, 2 of my other friends, Shivanand and Ashith (who stay together and work together), said they'd join. Then Shivanand's colleague Bala too joined us.Bala and I stayed at Shivanand's house overnight. Though our initial plan was to leave the house at 5 AM, it was past 7 AM when we really got out of the house!!! I had got up at 5 AM itself, after a short 2 hour sleep (note: I had to attend a bachelor's party the previous night). Made some egg bhurji. There were a few dried chapatis which we somehow managed to swallow with egg bhurji.I had to leave my bike at Shivanand's place (though I had a full tank of petrol) because of Shivanand's Pulsar 150 DTSi and Ashith's Pulsar 180 DTSi.We joined Ramesh at MG Road-Kasturba junction (as he had to come from Kundalahalli). As we were waiting for Ramesh, Ashith went ahead to fuel his bike. As he rode alone, leaving the 3 of us, when Ramesh arrived, we 4 went to Shell fuel station to catch up with Ashith. Because we 4 had settled in 2 bikes, Ashith's bike became the good carrier for the rest of the journey. Each of us was carrying a backpack. Ramesh had a rope, and so we tied up 2 bags on Ashith's bike, and carried the rest.We crossed Hudson circle at 8 AM. And we were speeding on Mysore road. Bala riding pillion with Shivanand, I riding pillion with Ramesh, and Ashith riding alone. I would say that the bike Pulsar is very unergonomically designed for the pillion rider. The seat is narrow (to give sleaky looks), giving lot of problems for people like me who are most graciously and most generously blessed by our creator. Luckily, so far no bad roads, and not much traffic. Except a lot of trucks going on the rightmost part of the road with high speed (relative to trucks, of course!!), and of course the numbness crawling into the pillion riders behinds, we had no problems.So we stopped somewhere in between. 3 of the guys wanted to take leaks. And I, the evil guy, took their photographs. Bala decided not to take a leak because of me :-)). Then we stopped at the usual stop-point, Kamath Lokaruchi. Refueled ourselves and continued further. And reached Srirangapatna soon. After enquiring with some people, found the bypass (to go to Coorg without entering Mysore city) and continued on it. When we reached Hunasur, we realized that we have no place to stay. We were too lazy to arrange one so far. I had a few numbers given by a couple of colleagues. When we contacted them, they said they don’t have space for 5 guys, but gave further contacts. One person had space for us, but at the cost of 3,500 Rs per night!!! Forget it!!! Then Ramesh called up to the place where he had stayed 3 years ago (what was he doing so far!!! He was thinking that we wouldn’t like that place.. Which we proved wrong later). As this man, Mr Poonacha, had space for us, we decided to go there. He said he'll give a dormitary kind of area. It didn’t sound impressive, but we thought it's ok for 1600 Rs per night for 5 people.We couldn’t take the Nagarahole route, as bikes are banned from going on that road (idiots!!! Just because the route goes to forests, they don’t want bikes to go). So we went through another route (I don’t remember the order in which the places came, so I am not going to tell you. If you want, I have the visiting card of the landlord at whose house we stayed :-D). Bought DSP Black on the way, as we couldn’t get any Scotch or even malt whiskey (for those who don’t know, it is a whiskey). We stopped for lunch (at Gonikoppa I think). Had little bit beer, lotsa pork chilli and chicken (awesome it was!!) and continued further. Soon we arrived at Iruppu falls. We decided to go to the falls before going to the house, because we knew we wouldn’t have energy to go out of the house. We had to purchase the tickets from the forest office there (some minimal fee). The forest officer was nice enough to let us leave all our baggage there. After walking .75 km (it is written there, and the path is not good at all. I mean, they've put cement and all and have made a nice path. I wanted those natural, stone and grass filled paths that tear your exposed skin), we reached the falls. It is very shallow and you can easily play in the water. You don’t even have to fear about getting drowned. But none of us had any mood to get into the water. After spending some time, we went to our guest house.And lo and behold!!! What a suite we got!! A huge hall with a sofa and 8 well-cushioned chairs, a big table, lot of books (who cares!!!) and decorations inside. The 3 sides of this room were filled with windows, through which we could see Mr Poonacha's estate outside. The sleeping room had a double bed and a single bed, had attached toilet (western)/bathroom. What more did we want? Nothing. We didn’t want the tv, we didn’t want to be connected to the external world. All the guys except me had Hutch connection, so were completely eliminated from the rest of the world (most obvious, isn't it?). I had a range of just 1 stick.. Just in case, you know...Chandru (the servant for Mr Poonacha) served us with tea. I don’t want to talk about its quality, do I? (of course, we were charged for the tea!!). Chandru said dinner would be served at 9 PM. So we got refreshed and opened our DSP Black. Chandru got us some Haldiram's snacks, Kinley soda and glass tumblers (only the last one was free :-D). As the whiskey started mingling with our blood and go into our brains, our brains returned to normal. We got a few bright ideas which would help the langauge of English and also the world soceity in a big way. For example, we replaced the word EMPLOY with that "four letter word dreaded by our elders, but is most common during swears" and made sentences. Words such as employment, employee, employer, unemployed, employable were all twisted and turned to give new meanings. Ideas such as having one employer with many employees and all were twisted beyond your wildest thoughts!!! Can someone help us put our thesis over the internet, please?Then Chandru called us for dinner. Oh man!!! Did we ever dream of having such a food?? First of all, everything that's on the table is unlimited. Pork in Coorg style, chicken masala, some peas curry, cabbage curry, sambar, chapatis and rice!! Everything more delicious that the other. We had thought that we'd lose 1 or 2 kgs during this trip, but now we realised that we would gain so much!!! After a sumptous dinner, and payasam (unfortunately, was the last one to have, so I got only 1/4th of a cup), we retired to sleep (but not before discussing further on the topic).Next morning, it was poori, dosa, bhaji and chutney for breakfast, with tea/coffee. I think we 5 guys ate 50+ pooris and 10+ dosas easily. I actually lost count of pooris after 12 :-)). Then Mr Poonacha suggested that we go to see the Tata's tea estate. He gave directions and soon we were in front of Tata Tea Estate. This part is called Glenlorna Estate. As the main gate was closed and no one was there to open the lock, we had to walk about 2 km to reach the factory. After getting permission from the factory manager, we went into the factory. A worker there took us all around and explained the process of making tea powder from the leaves. It is such a simple process, I didn’t expect this!!!! Then we bought lots of tea powder from there and went back to our guest house for lunch.We had asked for simple veg food for lunch. And there was simple veg food: 4 types of veg curries (cabbage, okra, dal, beans), chapatis and rice. And kheer for dessert. And then after lunch, we went to Nagarahole. We went till Kutta by bikes, and hired a jeep from there to go till the safari point. During safari, we started discussing about deer and mathematics (deer being so common there). I mentioned that there are so many deer because deer multiply very fast. Someone said, then we'll ask the multiplication table. Then I said, it is difficult for deer to calculate 1234 X 9234 because they don’t have fingers, unlike humans. So Shivanand came up with this bright idea that deer have only hooves and they can't move their hooves. So they calculate everything on base 4, one for each leg (hope you guys remember base 4, base 8, base 16 calculations and all). Then the disussion continued and we were laughing until the bus driver screamed at us and asked to to keep quiet.After a useless safari (got to see 2 peacocks, a few bisons and lots of deer; the deer there was like the street dogs of Bangalore, except that the deer bite only the vegetation and not the small children), we returned to our base. On the way I got this bright PJ: what do you call the waterfalls inside Nagarahole?? NAYAGARAHOLE.. HAHAHAHAHAWe reached our guest house at 7 PM, much earlier than we had thought. We had only little bit of whiskey left. Mr Poonacha suggested us to try the grape wine and banana wine prepared by his wife Beena. We tasted it and immediately purchased a bottle of each. Within a few minutes, we were drinking that in our rooms, together with chilli bhajji and tapioca chips (of Komal's Mangalore. They gave this to us probably because they got to know that 3 of us were Mangaloreans).Then time for dinner. Just like the previous day. Only the vegetarian curry was different. This night we had energy to roam around. So we stayed outside the house for some time, enjoying the cold weather. We wished we could stay there longer, but we had to return the next morning. And so we left that place after a breakfast which was very similar to the previous one, except that there were no pooris. Only dosas.We went to Balamuri on the way. Had some beer and fish and some bhelpuri. And then stopped at Kamath Lokaruchi and then reached Bangalore at around 8 PM, after riding 604 km all in all.Thanks to God, nothing went wrong seriously throughout our journey.