Thursday, October 22, 2015

Ride to Queen of Hills

Sitting in a extremely slow moving bus on a jam packed corporation circle after a freak of a day at office is exactly the reason why I want to get out of this , the best way is to pack up the bags pickup those keys and ride , though to an unknown destination would be ideal but nothing to take away if the known destination is as stunning as the Conoor . Emerald lake and the ride to Avalanche can have me there over and over again.


The long weekend was awaiting, Oct 2nd being a national holiday meant three days off and I and Aashu quickly decided we gonna ride to Pondy , but somehow at the last minute I decided to ride to Conoor. I booked my Homestay using #yatra.com , my company was providing us 15% off on all the bookings done through yatra , and I used this opportunity to book the homestay , generally I never do pre booking of rooms , but with wife with me and the experience of last ride I decided to prebook a homestay . As I was a first time visitor at yatra I got a 25% off on my booking and i booked a homestay called Aldivino which is just 1.5kms away from sims park in Conoor.

View From the Homestay

We started our ride at 6.30am and it started drizzling, but fortunately as we reached Mysore road the rain subsided making way for an awesome weather to ride. The excitement was short lived , Mysore road with heavy traffic , speed humps , road obstacles is a pain to ride , really can’t understand what is the need for so many obstacles at every 25kms which piles on the traffic , and the long weekend made the situation worse , but still I was doing good speeds , we stopped for breakfast at Kamath in Channapatana and reached Mysore city at 10.30am , from Mysore city to reach Gundlupet is another task , bad under construction roads and bad traffic make matter worse , always advisable to avoid this road and instead take Bangalore-Kanakapura-Chamarajanagara(NH 209)-Gundlupet if you are travelling to Ooty,Sultan battery ,Waynad etc , which I did on my return leg.

After an irritating ride from Mysore to Bandipur , we entered the Bandipur forest , the forest welcomed us , the vegetation was thick and it looked beautiful as ever , loads of birds and deer’s on the way and we reached to Kalhatti ghat passing the charming Madhumalai tiger reserve and Masinagudi , the 36 hairpin bends of Kalhatti Ghat is a treat to a rider , the curves are sharp and steep and the route is breathtakingly scenic , the AS200 was beautiful on the curves and I must give credit to Aashu for holding her nerves in the curves , I just love speeding in the curves I know it’s not a good riding habit but it’s difficult to stop myself . 

2pm we reached Ooty , had our lunch at Ooty and headed straight to Conoor which is 19kms from Ooty city.We reached Conoor at 3pm post our lunch and our very friendly host guided us to the home stay. Aldivino homestay was awesome , in a beautiful locale , very clean , nothing fancy but well maintained , a very good host and a very humble room service guy. We took a much needed hot water bath , rested for a while and went to swamy&swamy tea factory at Sims Park , I love this place , the place has some great views and an ideal place to photograph sunset. We spent some quality time at the tea fields photographing, came back to our homestay and zzzzzz.....

The Old World Charm

The Old World Charm

The Lovely Golden Hour

The Beautiful Contrasts of Nature
The Surprise of Nature , the green leaf has a white petal and a orange bud

Gorgeous spread of landscape 

The happiness in little things

Somewhere far the old world exists 

The customary family pic

We woke up leisurely on Saturday , our plan was just to ride up to Avalanche , take a few photographs at the stunning emerald lake and rest for the day. We started at 8.30 in the morning, had breakfast at Conoor town and started our ride towards avalanche. The valleys opened up for some spectacular views , the valley where you can view the emerald lake is a visual treat , I was enjoying the views and suddenly Aashu told me to stop the bike , when inquired she told her mobile has fallen off , immediately we called and the we heard the familiar tone telling " the number you are dialing is currently switched off " . 

I stopped over at many places on the way to take photographs and as I was photographing I saw a few guys playing near the emerald lake below , a couple of times before I had been to emerald I was not allowed to go near the lake as its a protected area , I understood that only the area around the dam is a protected area and with the help of local folks I rode down to the lake , we spent some time on the banks of this stunning lake , it’s called emerald because its covered by greenery all around and because of which the lake looks green in color which gave it the name emerald.

Need a caption?
Far There is the emerald lake

From another angle

The gorgeous grassland and the lake

The Landscape just opened up to bless us

After spending sometime at the lake we rode back to reach the avalanche check post and for the 3-4th time I was denied the entry as there were too many people to accommodate, disappointed rode back to Ooty , purchased the famous Ooty homemade chocolates for the family and rode back to homestay , tea , chatting and hot water bath and relax , day well spent.

View from the homestay

The evening just got beautiful

Nice place to hangout
We had packed the previous night and we started our ride back at 6.30 in the morning. It was cold and I felt cramps in the fingers , the fog filled Kalhatti ghat was simply beyond explanation , Aashu was all exited , we stopped for breakfast after crossing the Bandipur forest , as told earlier , I took deviation at Gundlupet towards Chamarajnagar to avoid Nanjangud road. A couple of stops one for tender coconut and for some fruits and reached home by 1.30 pm.

My two love

The queen of hills was as welcoming as always, Aashu thoroughly enjoyed the ride, hope you enjoyed the blog and photographs , until next time I ride to Yelagiri for RTMC 14A , take care and god bless

1 comment: