Tamil Nadu bike trip - Part 1

Am writing this in continuation to my previous blog "Life of an IT employee"

My parents had reached US and were busy with their kids and kids’ kids. This helped me in a way that parents were not much worried about my adventure trip and thus I was fully excited without any pressures. Me and Mohan started thinking about the route to be taken and after umpteen number of discussions we decided not to have a pre-planned route. Hence we wanted to take it one day at a time. That is, at the end of each day, we would think about the next day’s destination. This sounded very adventurous to both of us. I wanted to cover as many forest areas and hills as possible. This, I thought, would add more zest to my trip as I was willing to do some tough treks and hill or rock climbings.

As a part of the preparations, I got my Thunderbird serviced well for our long bike ride. Then we shopped for small items like head torch, swiss knife, tissue paper, wet tissues, rechargeable batteries and many more which we felt might be necessary for our journey. Unfortunately none of us had a smart phone and hence no maps or GPS L So we bought two good Tamil Nadu maps, one in the form of a book (Eicher’s) and the other one a big sized map. The major item which I bought especially for the trip was my Sony camcorder. I wanted to cover the whole journey through my cam and make it a full fledged travel video. Then I thought I can make use of this video to somehow get into the travel and tourism profession.

Mohan has a friend who is a part-time racer. We had taken some tips from him about things that have to be taken care of while riding, of course, eventually most of them we did not follow :D

Along with planning for the trip, I was also a bit busy with my thoughts about my Sports club plan. I went around looking for suitable places in Chennai and talked to their owners. I also met vendors for all the sports equipments like Table tennis, Snookers/Billiards, Fusbol and more. As my journey start date was nearing, I started focussing more on the trip and less about my business venture (which eventually did not end up anywhere).

Just 2 days before our journey, both of us wanted to get a feel of riding. We set off to mahabalipuram, 55 KM from Chennai. On the way we halted at many places to play Frisbee on the beaches. We came back home by late afternoon. The feeling of liberty when one does not have a job at hand and zero commitments is one thing which I would like to have throughout my life J

By this time we were fully set for our road trip. We decided to start on Feb 25^th. The night before, we slept early after packing my trek bag which finally weighed around 18KG. I was wondering how my 50 Kg friend is gonna manage it on the bike.

Day-1

Finally the day came. After a good night’s sleep, we got up waiting to embark on the bike trip for which we were waiting for about a month. It feels nice to wake up with such a nice plan in mind. One of the bes/t mornings of my life. We got up at around 5.30 and gave a final check to the list of items packed. Everything seemed to be perfectly done. My friend gathered the luggage we and stepped out. We clicked a snap of ourselves in front of the bike before starting off.

The kick-start sounded like a thunder and then we vroomed away from our home. We bid goodbye to our house. This day we wanted to reach a hill called Javvadhu hills in Tiruvannamalai district. Javvadhu is not a popular place and less commercialised. But I heard from my brother that it is a good place suitable for treks.

 We took the Bangalore highway NH4. The watch showed 8 o clock. We crossed Sriperumbudur and had Idlis at a small hotel (Kai-Yendhi hotel in Tamil). Then left for Kanchipuram, 63KM from Chennai, where we halted near the famous Kamatchi Amman temple. We spent some time here, not with the intention of visiting that temple me being an atheist, but just to look around the city. This is when we started having “colour” drinks (Kalimark brand) which we do not get in Chennai. “Colour” drinks are basically cold drinks of Orange and Grape flavours. I just love those. The whole trip we drank only these colour drinks and Bovonto. I opine that these are far better than the colas and pepsis. Then we just walked around the city and started again after an hour.

After some deliberations about the route, we headed towards Vandavasi. Just 6 KMs before Vandavasi, we noticed a good looking temple at a place called Thennangur. It was a Radhe Krishna temple. Guys I promise that I am an atheist and I am not sure if I can say the same about Mohan. We stood outside the temple and were just making enquiries about the local area. This was the first place where we started shooting video as a part of travel profession plans. I was really excited standing in front of the camcorder talking about some tourist spot. I already started feeling like a TLC travel reporter J Hope one day I land into one such job in TLC or NDTV good times.

Then we proceeded with our journey and halted at some scenic places to enjoy the nature. We took a small break at Vandavasi. On an average we take atleast 15 breaks in a day. Here we made enquiries about the road to Polur. On the way to Polur, we got to see many hillocks and got attracted to one. A mud road led us to that and we parked our bike, left our belongings there. In the intention of climbing the hillock, we went towards it and started climbing the boulders. Some were tough and some quite easy. Spent some quality 45 minutes here, got some good view from the top and clicked some snaps. Throughout we were keeping an eye on my bike just to ensure that no passerby meddled with it.

It was around 1:30 in the noon now. On the way to Polur we saw many more climbable hills and hillocks but Mohan stopped me from halting here in the fear that we might be late to Javvadhu. One awesome hill I gotta mention here. Its name is Ponnur hills. This had a temple on its peak (most of the hills have some temple or the other at the top). I got a feeling that this temple might be a popular one as there were steps constructed for people to reach it. Steps were right in the middle of the hill and it gave it a beautiful look. I am afraid I do not have a picture of it to be shown here. Further we stopped only at Polur to have lunch at around 3 o clock. Javvadhu is around 45KM from here.

We took the beautiful road to Javvadhu and halted for clicking some snaps at a place. Here some villagers on the road were courteous enough to ask us if we required drinking water. I did not have words to thank them for their helpfulness. Going ahead we almost reached the hill top. Just a few KMs before the town, we stopped to see a board which was showing the tourism spots in and nearby Javvadhu. As me and Mohan were spending time here leisurely, a man came towards and started talking to us. Behind him was his 3 year old daughter. He wanted us to take a picture of his kid who was running on the road. That guy made her go back and come towards us running. I did as he pleased. Then he made her do it several times. We being fools, took time to understand that he was drunk. Then we stopped him doing this and brought that kid towards us. He started talking about local politics and other things. He also wanted us to help him with the politics. I wished I too were drunk to handle this guy. After a great deal of time we managed to get rid of him and advised him to take the kid home safely. I understood that we wasted our time advising him as he was not in a mood to listen to us. Somehow we escaped and reached the town. We had a coffee break here and made some enquiries for accommodation. A guy told that the only good place to stay was the village BDO. As I already mentioned, the place was not a commercialised one and hence the only hotel also was not upto the lowest standard possible. We talked to the BDO manager and after giving us some suspicious glances, he agreed to give us a room for 450 rupees. After sometime the manager started conversing well with us. The room was as simple as possible. Normally, the one and only thing I look for in an accommodation is the washroom. I am very particular about it. But here I had no choice. After a long gap, this was when I started using Indian lavatories.

Having taken some rest, we went out to just make enquiries about the forest area. We had idlis and kuzhi paniyaaram (a Tamil Nadu delicacy) for dinner. Then we came back to our room and hit the bed awaiting a good day the next day. I started noting down the places visited and distances covered on that particular day. After doing this, we dozed off.

Distance travelled on 1^st day: 220KM

Route taken: Chennai – Kanchipuram - Vandavasi – Polur – Javadhu hills

Life of an IT employee

This is the first post in a series narrating my life and experiences after I quit my TCS job in December last year.

A typical IT guy working in a software firm does not have much to boast about in his life. As a routine day goes, he works in a project where client keeps giving requirements, which are, in hindsight, of really no use to their organisation. Time is spent on this useless task by multiple people like a functional guy, two technical guys, a manager and a super manager (if deadlines not met). After spending much time (9-10 hrs a day) in a hopeless way, he goes back home and usefully spends a few minutes on dinner and wastefully spends a few hours on social networking till midnight. The same routine goes for 5 days a week and at times 6 or 7 days a week too. A fortunate IT guy may have a whole weekend free for himself which again cannot be of much help to him as Sunday is a dull day spent with the bad thoughts of the next day’s office. Friday night and Saturday are the only times available for freaking out. A handful of people use this one day and one night to go away from the residing city to be part of nature (which I feel is the best way of refreshing oneself), either by going on treks or short bike rides to a nearby isolated place like a hillock or something. Those other than that handful people would mostly spend times in boozing on Friday nights or at restaurants and malls watching movies. Typically an IT guy will be effectively having some 40 hours for himself to be spent in a meaningful way (I know that “meaningful” is subjective). Like a carrot tied to a horse’s head, salary is tied to our heads and we run to get hold of it like a horse does. In the end we just get to smell it and then it disappears in a jiffy. A month-long wait is worth just for one or two days.

Bored with all such thoughts in my mind, I decided to call it quits. To hell with my job. I gotta LIVE my one and only precious life. Thus, 25^th December was the day when I (a typical IT guy explained above) last worked in a private organisation doing some monotonous stupid boring office work. It was actually not as tough a task answering others doubts regarding my decision as it was answering to myself. After successfully doing so, I immediately embarked on a simple leisure trip to Delhi, Rishikesh, Mussourie and Agra (all already visited places) with my friends. My break started with a bang with this one week trip (from 26th Dec '12 to 2nd Jan '13). The rafting at Rishikesh, the cold morning at Taj Mahal and many more things brought me back to life. I decided that travelling is what am gonna do the next few months.

Some of the snaps are here:

I went back to my home rejuvenated and was busy with helping parents for their long trip to US to stay with my elder brothers. One month went by being with parents and entertaining relatives. Then parents flew to USA and here I was all alone excited to lead a nomadic life. Fortunately I got in touch with one of my college friends who also had quit his job for taking up some venture of his own interest. But he had lots of free time with him before doing so. Things fell in line for me as he immediately agreed for some of my plans.

I had planned for two major adventure activities. One was a Tamil Nadu bike trip and the other one was a mountaineering course, either in Darjeeling or Uttarakhand. Initially the mountaineering plan faced a setback as both the institutes at the above two places did not have any vacancies. That is when I got to know of one more Mountaineering Institute called Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering at Pahalgam, Kashmir and luckily slots were still available. We immediately applied for the course through Speed Post and were glad to see the acknowledgement letter from the institute. One plan fixed. The course was scheduled for the whole month of April. We were completely pumped up thinking about the month long stay at Pahalgam (actually I was the only one pumped up, my friend is kind of stoic most of the times).

Wait for my next blog which will be about my TN Biking trip planning and execution.