This is one of the most adventurous and scenic road-trip by bikes , we had taken …

A BIG TURN-AROUND

We had decided to do a bike trip to mangalore , initially … And we , had prepared the travel itinerary. BUT , on the night before the trip , We realized , that our trip would be a fiasco , if we go by this season of the year , as most of the beaches, would be burning under the sun ( during May ) … So , we immediately changed the plan to go for kerala and as we have more experience about kerala , it was really not a big issue ,after all … This is how the AWESOME BIKE TRIP GOT STARTED !

THE PLAN

The plan was an awesome one , and thereby it fueled our adventurous journey. In brief, the plan was to start the trip from Perundurai ( near Erode ) ,as our college was here, at 2′0 clock in the morning … totally we were 8 guys , riding on 4 bikes ( All Pulsar DTS-i 150 CC) . The route , was

Erode – Munnar – Thekkady – Idukki – Perumbavoor – Chalakudy – Athirapally – Valparai – Pollachi – Erode

DAYS , for the whole trip , is 3 … Easily , anyone would laugh at us , for the short time , we planned to cover all these places … BUT , we are not so naive , gentlemen … There were a couple of reasons to it … One , We had our final semester exam coming , shortly before our journey and two , most of the guys in our trip, have seen most of the places in our trip , many a times before … So the date was 14th May 2009 … And We are ready to hit the roads…

DAY ONE

START- Erode

ROUTE – Erode – Udumelpet – Amaravathi Dam – Maraiyur – Chinnar – Munnar – Mattupatty Dam – Echo point – Thekkady

END – Thekkady

We started from erode, in full spirits , in the early morning , some time around 2′o clock … w

e reached Amaravathi Dam, the Sun rise , at 6 am … As you can see, the Dam was dry . We are not shocked , as we expected this , because its scorching-hot summer in Tamil Nadu… We took some pictures , and we hit the roads … We are now on the road to Munnar … Luckily for us , We spotted some elephant , a single ,along the road … We took pictures , and we were so daring , that we didn’t even afraid of the elephant charging at us …

We continued our uphill to munnar and one of friends , found this really nice little stream running discreetly under a bridge , we are crossing … We had a bath in the stream and I tried to explore the stream a lil’ bit up in its course and I found a natural pool … then, we dressed up and hit the roads quickly …

MUNNAR – The TATA’s OWN Hill Station

We arrived munnar at noon …  As we have already came to Munnar before… We just ought to check out only a few places that are nice …

1)Mattupatty Dam – The Drive to the Dam is needless to say , SCENIC … Also the boating is not too bad , But we did not dare to take a risk …

2)ECHO Point – We tried , but we could not hear any echo’s but okay, its alright … as we didn’t expect anything … We chewed some fried corn

We came back to Munnar and had our lunch … And we hit the roads to Thekkady … We drove though the mist and drizzle and through the sceneries … Very lovely ride , indeed … We reached thekkady by evening …. We found one cheap home stay , Rs.100/- per head … We slept.

DAY TWO

START – Thekkady

ROUTE – Thekkady – Rammakal Medu – Idukki Dam – Cheruthoni Dam – Thodupuzha – Muvattupuzha – Perumbavoor – Chalakudy

END – Chalakudy

We wake up a lil’ late and went to boating at somewhere around 10 AM … We could only afford lower deck , since we are in lower budgets … The boating , which ought to be a breath-taking one , turned out to be a sleepy ride … We just saw some wild buffalos and then one wild boar and some birds , at the start of the boating … And after that , there was no animals , at all … How on the earth , the animals would come closer near the lake , if 5 to 6 boats , all at once started sailing … We wasted our precious 2 and 1/2 hour by this hectic and boring boat-ride … We are happy to back on the wheels , once again … We started our ride towards Idukki dam …

As we had ride some 40 kms , one guy at the air-checking station , told us about a place called Rammakal Medu … We , decided to take the risk and went there , it was off-road to idukki , but we are confident that we would not be deceived … But we found out that the place was nice totally …. the place is a hill-top with a good viewpoint of the plains and too with a big statue of half-naked man and woman in stone … And also we could see the windmills located at an opposite hilltop from there … We took pictures and hit the roads again …

We were now pretty closer to the Idukki dam and we had a good view point from some distance… Oh! man , its huge and tall … the Dam is Asia’s Second Largest Arch Dam … We were denied the permission to take pictures from the foot of the Dam ,and the officials say ,it was restricted to take photos … We then visited Cheruthoni Dam ,which also was magnificient to look and once again we were prohibited from taking pictures … From the Dam , we could see some caves in the mountains , huge ones … my friends got some interesting theories to it … Now we are on our ride to Chalakudy … We passed through two lake-towns named …But We could not damn see anything , since it was already 8 PM … We reached Chalakudy and hard-found a hotel to stay … It was like a scary house … But then , we could not sap ourselves , finding an another hotel at this time …

DAY THREE

START – Chalakudy

ROUTE – Chalakudy – Athirapally – Sholaiyar Dam – Valparai – Aliyar Dam – Pollachi – Palladam – Kangeyam – Home

END – Home

We wake up at 7.30 and started an awesome uphill journey towards Valparai through the destered roads via Athirapally falls and the splendid Athirapally river’s course … We reached athirapally falls … Waterfall look swindled , but yet pose a splendid view amongst the forest and woods and green … We walked some 1/2 km to reach the top of the waterfalls … Though many people were swimming in the river , we dare to miss it … Bcoz of two reasons …. one , We are exhausted and deprived of energy after two days of gruelling bike ride … two , we or atleast me , dont like the idea of swimming in the crowds … so we descended down to reach the feet of the waterfall … we caught some awesome pictures here and also the view is really a memorable one … We then climbed up to the road and hopped on the bikes to ride uphill …

We then stopped by the place where people stopped to sneak into the jungle river … We found it to be more scenic , since it was pure jungle and deserted except for a few of us … As I already said ,the bike ride took a toll on our body , and we were damn tired to take a swim … But we had a great view of the river … We continued our ride … We reached the solaiyar dam … Nature forbid Tamil Nadu … It seems .. Absoultely no sensible amount of water in the dam … We were really sad to see it this way … Anyway , we continued our ride throught the tea estates and skipped the valparai town to reach the main road to pollachi … We then stopped at the Aliyar dam for a short while to relax ourselves … Then , we made our final journey to sweet home … Three days of Scenic Road Trip ….hmmm… We gonna miss that a lot …

For more photos , mail me @ admin@karthicklive.com