9th -11th August 2013
Finally I am putting it, right this was pending for long and I didn't want to miss out writing this. This ride was my first multi-day cycling expedition and good amount of anticipation was built around it, in spite of being totally bugged with work commitments. On 8th August, I had to rush to catch the bus starting at 11.45 pm from Majestic, funny and coincidently things went good. I left office by 10 pm, had to run to my room, collect my cycle and baggage and on my way to the bus station, I was just thinking how to ride around 18-20kms distance in just about an hour. To my rescue, volvo bus which was passing by allowed me to carry my cycle, I thanked God. Now I was bit relieved my expedition is still on, meantime I handed bit of my workload to my colleague who gracefully accepted my request. I was late to the bus station, but the bus was also late. Now, all that is said and done we were on for our expedition. We boarded our cycles into bus, after bit of negotiation we settled at paying 150 rs to both cycle till Shimoga. Since this was first time we were loading our cycles into bus there was bit of hassle to fit them inside the carriage.
Our plan for this expedition was to ride through Shimoga, Thirthhalli, Agumbe, Sringeri and Horanadu and end the expedition at Mudigere, around about 240-250 kms through Western Ghats.
Started off from Shimoga around 7 am after freshening and fuelling up with light breakfast typical idli wada sambar. Thirthhalli was set as our first destination. After learning the road was perfect with no major elevation, we covered the first 60kms pretty smoothly, we stopped at couple of places, one at the bird sanctuary and a dam and few more places to take photos. We had lunch at Thirthhalli, around the same time, we decided to ride further till Agumbe and call off the day. We had another 35 kms to cover. Rain welcomed our ride as we took route to Agumbe. Route was hilly climb and wonderful, Western ghat was never felt so close. We pushed ourself to reach our destination by dark. We reached Agumbe around 7 pm. I started to search for "Dodda Mane", age old mansion featured in popular TV serial of 90's "Malgudi Days". Was able to locate the house at some distance, due to rain the whole mansion was covered with plastic sheet. The house was full of visitor due to long holiday weekend. We requested Ajji [Grand nanny] at the house we could adjust somewhere inside. She agreed to let us stay for the night.
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| Start of our journey |
I could recollect all the rooms showed in the Malgudi Days TV serial. It was old, lots of wood work, water well inside the house, water heating drums, felt good about staying in a place which had age old history and different generations leaving under single roof. Kasturi Akka [Amma] maintain the house and guests. Next day we planned to leave early to our next course, we bid adieu to Kasturi Amma with lots of good memories and headed towards to Shringeri Matt.
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| Malgudi Days serial was shot here |
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| With Kasturi Akka @ Dodda Mane |
We reached Shringeri Matt by 11 am and had darshan of Shardamba Devi. We waited for sometime to have prasadam and soon after we left to Horanadu. We had the plan to reach Horanadu by day light and make a stay there. We started by 1 pm and had the target of around 60 km ride before it turns dark. We kept our pace with the time factor in mind, ride was good with few steep climbs, traversing through coffee and tea plantation was wonderful, we managed to have a good ride and kept the pace at the same time, we stopped couple of time to have authentic plantation tea. 20 kms from Horanadu it turned dark, since we had not equipped ourself with good high beam torch, we thought to call the day. Talking to few people at the tea stall, we found staying at Kalasa place around 12 kms from Horanadu was best option. We rode till Kalasa and fixed a lodge to stay overnight.
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| @Shringeri Matt |
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| @Horanadu with Kids |
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| @Horanadu Annapurneshwari Temple |
We needed a Airavat bus from KSRTC to transport our cycles, on the course we learned that the bus doesn't pass by our final destination which was Mudigeri. Next morning we enquired more on that and finally decided to stop our ride at Horanadu and catch the bus from there. So now we had only 12 kms ride left for the whole trip. We wanted to catch lots of pictures we missed to take last couple of days and also enjoy the short stops at tea stalls.
Reached Horanadu by 11 am, had Sri Annapurna Devi darshan. As we sat idle, idea popped into mind why not do some seva. Lunch was about to start, I went to one of the person who was in charge of lunch there and asked if we can serve. He asked us to fill the water glass and serve whoever asks for water while they are having lunch. We got friendly with the guys who were already doing this and had loads of fun doing this service. We did it for 2 hours before we were asked to have our lunch before the stipulated lunch hours.
We had booked the bus at 9pm, we had time of the world to spend next 5-6 hours. Dozed a bit in the temple and went around to have tea. Again dinner prasad started at 8 pm, now we were first to take the seat for dinner. Boarded the bus at 9, but had some quarrel with ticket collector over our luggage "cylces".
We had wonder three days of cycles, life for us was pacing at 10-15 kmph and felt wonderful to be so close to Western Ghats. Met lot of good, humble people who helped us one or the other way, seeing the excitement in the eyes of village people, especially children was wonderful experience. Bye for now.
Keep Cycling.
Save Environment.
