Bangalore - Calicut Bike trip

Bino decided to go on a bike trip during the weekend of good friday, April 22 - 24 and he forced me to say yes to come along. I was thinking of going to Mangalore but then we were looking for other alternatives. Sanjay and Gayatri had planned to go the Kappad beach resort near Calicut and we decided to join them. They left on the friday and reached there by evening on Sanjay's car. The 354km route seemed like a good choice:


Me and Bino had planned to leave on Saturday morning by 5:00 am but because of heavy rains and lack of rain pants forced us to leave late at 9:00am. Heavy traffic delayed our reaching the outskirt of the city on the Mysore road. After a minor bike repair, we resumed journey and stopped at Barista to have breakfast by 11am. We reached Mysore by 1pm and continued through Bandipur and Vayanad reserve forest area. Some pics:



After Vayanad started the decent and the traffic slowed down our journey. However, the view of the valley and the beautiful greenery along the curved wet roads more than compensated for the slow pace. After reaching the start of the plains and with more 100km to go, heavy rain started at 5:30pm before Kalpetta. But after taking a small break, we decided to resume journey for there would surely be no end to the rain. And it turned out to be right for the next 3 hours.
There was a point where Bino couldn't see anything because of rain flooding his glasses and so I had to ride at 30km/h for 1 whole hour and him following me neck to neck!

But finally rain subsided by 8:30pm and we managed to reach the resort by 9:30pm. We had our room booked next to Sanjay's. We had dinner and slept by 1:30am.

Next morning I got up at 7am to my own surprise and took a small walk outside. Some more pics:


All of us had breakfast by 9:30am and we hit the swimming pool. After an hour in pool, we took a small walk on the beach and headed back to the room to pack our bags for the return journey. The beach was very neat, clean and had lot of huge crabs... I could spot only one though, out in the open.




We had a nice lunch and headed back:


The return journey was quite enjoyable too. Overtaking the rash Mallu drivers was a bit of fun. There was this stretch in the reserve forest where these hugh bamboo-like trees created this arch kind of cover to the whole road... awesome. But couldn't capture it on camera properly.

By the time we reached the outskirts and had our dinner, it was 11pm. I was feeling super sleepy and was forced to put coffee and sutts. We reached Bino's place by 1:30 and I just hit the bed.