The Electric Chair

So, finally did a bike trip. Seema and I left off pretty late on a Saturday morning with meagre preparations which consisted of buying two trekking bags and one topi. We tied the bags to the bike, put the topi on Seema's hair (to protect it from some ultra sensitive ultra expensive hairdo she'd gotten done recently), set the trip counter to zero and set off. It would not be totally wrong to say that the trip was not a bikers' delight. The roads were bad; not bad enough to prevent anyone from biking down, but bad enough to steal the pleasure. We reached Bheemeshwari in about 2 hours 45 mins from point to point covering 95 kms at an average speed of only 35 kms per hour, although we managed to touch a max speed of 107. The stretch of about 15-20 kms just before Bheemeshwari is a pleasure. Its a narrow and slightly winding road, and feels like playing a videogame.

Bheemeshwari is a place with nothing to do. Thats a good thing, btw. Its quite scenic, bang on the banks of the Cauvery, and turned out to be warmer than Bangalore. Our warm jackets remained unused. We reached around 2PM, and had good food and a beer. Rested for a while and then in the evening we went on a coracle ride which is something like a big kadhai in water. Good fun tho. We decided to go on a short bike trip just before sunset, for about half an hour. Later there was more beer and food near a bonfire. The next morning there was a nature trek, for an hour which culminated in the watch tower, giving an amazing view of the Cauvery below.

The weather on the way back was just awesome - cool and cloudy. About 35 kms from Bangalore it started raining a bit. We kept riding with our jackets on, as it wasnt a heavy downpour and it stopped in 10-15 minutes. Took about the same time to get back. Nice trip, all the more nicer for the company.

# posted by A Chrysanthemum by any other name... : 7:56 AM