It was time for yet another First Sunday Ride and this time the route was decided to be towards Bagepalli, north of Bangalore, towards the Andra Pradesh border. Solid start for the new year with 19 people turning up! The meeting point as usual at 06.30am, at the top of Mekhri Circle and we got there in time to see a few of the regulars and a few new members already there. At the time, neither did the fog nor did the weather seem too big an issue. But, how that changed once we headed out on Bellary road!

By the time we touched Hebbal flyover, visibility was down to under 100mts. Riding in the fog was ok for us, since we’re running in. But the speeds of all other bikes dropped to a sensible low as the fog showed no signs of reducing. Even right up until 08.30am, we had thick fog. Luckily for us, the roads were ok, pretty much till the Andhra Pradesh border. We kept wondering how it would be to have a lot of RTMC members riding down for Rider Mania on the same route in under a couple of week’s time. Hope it’s not a disaster waiting to happen with people getting lost etc. So, the FSR turned out to be a Foggy Sunday Ride!

Right up until breakfast, we had to be really careful due to the fog

Bangalore – Hyderabad road, pretty much screwed up due to construction

We stopped well before Bagepalli for a good breakfast where the Sambar of the Idly went cold before the waiter managed to get it and we could see how cold it was when almost no one removed the riding gear to even eat! Once done with breakfast, Kavitha and I took off, since our pace was much slower than the rest, who caught up with us at the Andhra border. Here Vodka’s bike needed a bit of TLC and the tools that I was carrying came of some use.

We then headed into Bagepalli and on the route we decided through Patpalya, Chelur, Chintamani, Hoskote and back to Bangalore. While asking for the route at Bagepalli, I mistakenly asked for Patalpalya, which roughly translates to the “Hell’s Land”! Didn’t get chased, thankfully! After this stretch, we didn’t see the rest of the people for the whole ride. Since, we were just crawling along, I assumed the rest would catch up eventually. But, it turned out that there had been a couple of crashes and they were held up with the repairs. Due to lack of mobile signal, we couldn’t get in touch and by the time we did so, it made no point to turn around and go back. So, we kind of missed out on all the stuff the group went through, which involved amongst others, trying to tow and fix a crashed Enfield.

Huge rocks and shrubs everywhere.

The only patch of bright green we saw!

Not tarmac, but comfortable

The route was pretty good, with long stretches of mud roads. The tarmac was non existent, but the ride quality was not all that bad. We did ride around a few lakes and some greenery. One of the local buses almost clipped us on the road to Patpalya, which was under construction. I had to get off the road for the bast—d private bus driver who just was in no mood to comply and almost mowed us down. But for that we did have a good ride.

Rocky mountains?

Sher Khan Kunte Tank

Lovely backroads for exploring

The general flora around this area is mainly shrubs and small trees. By afternoon, it was getting pretty hot and not much shade to be had. We didn’t stop much nearing Bangalore as there was nothing very interesting to see/shoot and just rode back in.