“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
“I will be back” this is what I
said when I drove to Udupi , my hometown , in June . The rains had just started and
already Shiradi Ghat was looking stunning with its evergreen vegetation and
also the mountain streams everywhere .
With the Independence Day long weekend , it was the perfect time to go on a
photography ride , being a travel junkie , the Shiradi Ghat ride provides the
perfect mixture of adventure and cruising experience .With buttery smooth highway for most of
the ride , opening up for gorgeous twesties complemented by its stunning views
.
With the trip I had planned was a camping road trip it was just a perfect
long weekend.
3 friends 2 of whom were on India’s
fondest bike the Royal Enfield and me on my Pulsar AS200 set out on the 13th
of August at 6AM , it being a long weekend the early morning traffic was bad
until we hit the NH 47 , a near perfect weather greeted us and we were happily
cruising , as usual I was hitting good speeds with me loving the AS200 the more
I ride it , and Enfield’s were on their happy cruise mode. Soon after breakfast
at Mayura we crossed Sakleshpur and I and Sree stopped for taking photographs .
At this point Deepak overtook us
and we were not able to locate him for next few hours with me spending most of
my time in photographing the waterfalls in the Ghats , with slight drizzle all
along it looked incredibly beautiful and with no network , there was no trace of
Deepak either . I and Sree decided to go to Sakleshpur and call Deepak to the
hotel were we decided have our lunch and as I stopped to give a one last call to him , Deepak came along just to say he had went ahead some 70kms as the
roads looked beautiful. Reminds me of my old riding days when I used to ride
without an agenda.
After our lunch at Sakleshpur , we
headed towards Shettihalli Churh on the backwater of Hemavathi Dam , that’s
where we had planned to pitch-in our tent , I was not very eager to pitch the tent near
the church and wanted to pitch-in anywhere along the long stretch on the backwater's .As we approached the abandoned church we could find lots of places
ideal to pitch in tent . We spent some time near the gorgeous bridge built
across the backwater connecting Shettihalli to other villages , the sunset was
beautiful that day and after spending some time we went to our camp area and
quickly set up the tent .
Just as we settled in , a couple of
villagers came in to tell its not safe to pitch in the tent , we knew those
guys were delightfully high and did not mean what they said , we exchanged a
few friendly gestures and the rest of the night was spent well with loads of
ride stories and some night photography experiments.
We dozed off at around
11PM and at midnight it started pouring. Morning the view from my tent was
beautiful , we spent some time listening to songs and clicking few photographs
and soon we saddled back to our return ride to Bangalore. On the way, gave a
visit to the famous ruined Shettihalli Church and by 9am we hit the highways
and reached home safe. A truly beautiful camping ride.
Until next time , be safe and god
bless.
