Monday, February 16, 2009

A whirlwind tour of South India - Day 1

I tied the spare air bag on the pillion seat as planned. It fit very nicely. Then called up Rohit (apparently he had not slept well and had just woken up when I was ready to move). I went to his place and had a cup of hot tea. Exchanged contact information with his parents etc. and then we are on our way. I filled up around 10 litres of petrol and we RIDE ON!!
The road till Belgaum is on NH-4 and part of the “GQ”. We started off pretty cool reaching speeds of 90 and 100 KPMH. We are climbing the Khambatki Ghat and I felt the bag turn loose. I halted tightened the bag with additional rope and ride on.
We arrive at Satara (110 Kms) in less than 2 hours and the bag turns loose again. We take a smoke break and try to figure out a way to tie the bag. Finally I decide that tying it will not work. Since the bag is small, I just placed it in the TB tank and the ride continues. From there on we stop directly at Kagal (258 Kms). I could not believe that we had done 148 Kms in one stretch. I was getting the feel of the bike and Rohit was there to push me as well. Rohit always rides fast and I do consistent speeds. But I normally played the catch up game for the whole trip. I touched max speeds of 110 KMPH and let me tell you, this bike moves. She is capable of better speeds but I am not confident so I don’t push her.
We reach Belgaum at 1:30. 360 Kms in 6 hours with two 15-20 min halts. Here we get confused whether we continue on NH 4 till Hubli (and then take a right to Karwar) or cross through Belgaum onto the road that takes us to Panaji/Karwar. Since our day 1 destination is Karwar, we do the right thing to cross Belgaum and take the road towards Panaji.
We come to a “Y” junction and here is where we make a mistake. I have learnt over years of travel to go with your own knowledge and instinct about directions. Apparently, we relied more on the knowledge of the local residents and this caused us grief. We took a left turn instead of the right and headed towards Yellapur since there is no “Karwar” milestone at the junction. Every local punter gave us different ways to reach Karwar and we got confused.
The only grief was that we did not make Karwar as planned on day 1. BUT, the road to Yellapur is just awesome. It passes through thick lush greenery and from the initial wildlife sightings, we felt that this 100 odd kilometers ride came as a boon in disguise. We sighted a couple of foxes, a loan peacock and some black face monkeys (HUPPYA in marathi). If one spends decent time, one may also encounter some varieties of the big cat.The Yellapur town (as you may call it) lies just on top of the ghats. We decided to halt at Yellapur because Ankola (NH17 junction) was a good 60 Kms and some more from Yellapur and then we didn’t know whether we could get a decent place to spend the night in. So we decided to take a halt. We came to know that there was a hotel (Hotel Sambhram J ) in the town. We took a look and decided to do some more searching. We found that there was a resort named “Banana County” 2 Kms off road from the main highway. We decided to check it out. The road (if there is such a thing) to the resort was dirt track and from the looks of it, road laying work was going on. We headed in the direction and in a couple of minutes we were in “tick” forest and I started sweating in the cold. The only light that came was from our bikes. No street lamps, no sign boards in sight. All of a sudden I saw a small board with an arrow and Banana County written on it. A sigh of relief. But the resort was no where to be seen. We went on for 3 or 4 odd kilometers and voila. We asked for a room and the manager rejected us. We were looking like goons carrying half the Karnataka dirt on our body, bags and motorcycles. Unshaven and disheveled as we looked. We checked in after requesting the manager a couple of times and then headed out on the same dirt road back to town to brush off the tiredness with a couple of drinks and some food. The tiredness anyways creeps in, our eyes turn red, the body starts aching and we head back to our room. After a nice hot water bath and clean clothes, we slept like babies.



Rohit's bike



The Banana County Resort - Yellapur



View from our room at Banana County


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