I was supposed to be travelling out of the country this weekend. But, due to a reschedule request from the client’s end, I ended up with a bunch of neatly ironed formal clothes, and no plans. I planned to vegetate plugging my ears shut with good earplugs. Kavitha made alternate plans and I was surprised that we actually got space at Wild Valley. This is a place that’s been visited by most of the people in our riding circle. I’d missed almost every ride to this place over the years. The plan was to leave Bangalore by 7am so that we could get there quickly. The place is about 200 kilometers from Bangalore so, we should be there in about 5 hours of easy riding. But, we left Bangalore only by around 9 a.m. and after fuelling up at Shell, took the N.I.C.E road till Kanakapura road. I planned to refuel in Kollegal, so that we would have enough fuel, if we decided to explore more in the hills and further deeper into the forests. From there on it was a pretty cool ride, but for the traffic. We stopped once at the spot above before Kanakapura and later at the Malavalli turn off since we’d not seen a good place for breakfast till then. We saw a small shop and went back there with some hope, but all he had was packaged biscuits. The neighboring place had chai, but the owner of that place was in a major argument with someone he owed money. I did get both the biscuits and the chai, but the heated argument was the lovely background music to our breakfast.
Riding on this highway is always a pleasure since its a narrower road with plenty of trees lining it. Its good enough to make you want to take a picnic basket along on the motorcycle. We stopped multiple times after this to enjoy the sights and smell the flowers. Though we’ve ridden this section of the road over many occasions earlier it mostly been on the way back home and almost always in the dark. We need to explore this section of the road more, largely overlooked since its so close to home. Sometime soon for sure.
As we rode past Kollegal, Kavitha reminded me that we needed to call ahead and let Wild Valley know that we were nearing. I found a nice lake and on the far end of the lake, I spotted a Banyan tree. That’ll make a nice spot to relax while we called ahead. So, off we went and it turned out that there wasn’t a clean spot to sit. So while Kavitha made or rather tried to make a call, I ran around the place trying to get a few good shots. That spot has to potential to be a lovely chill-out spot, if only it was cleaned out a little.
The road on the far end of the lake is the road that we would be heading back to. After a while, we would leave NH 209 for the state highway. Going straight ahead would take us to MM Hills. Try as we did, we didn’t get through the number of Wild Valley that we had. Since we’d parked next to a building, at least we weren’t heating up in the Sun.
Once onto the smaller road, as I approached a bus stop, saw a bunch of RD350s parked on the roadside. The blue one reminded me of Satya, the effect of seeing a red tank bag, and I stopped to catch up. Turned out it was Ritchie and his friends, who happened to be headed to the same place as us. Good! After speaking to them for a bit, realised that they were heading back to Kollegal to fill up, before proceeding further. Argh! That’s when I remembered that I had not topped up while we were in that town. Though we had the range, it was not too bad an idea and decided to go the same. We were just a little around 8kms from the fuel pump. Once fueled up, we decided to meet up at Wild Valley and the others took off.
We stopped as we neared the western ghats for this shot. Its a very beautiful spot, where it forms a gap between the hills. Given the light haze, it did make for a lovely sight. We stopped over there given that it was beautiful and also because we wouldn’t get a spot with a nice view for a while till we got to the destination. Also, we didn’t want to disappoint the goat herder who was checking out the motorcycle from all directions. Eventually he walked away after straightening his beard looking at his reflection in the motorcycle visor.
Final stretch to Wild Valley
We had spent too much time by then and were sure that by the time we left the old goat herd behind, the fellows on the Yamaha RD 350 s would have reached the destination. So, much for waiting for the light and other things photography brings along with it. We started riding again and passed the RD group along the way and reached the Tamil Nadu check-post. From there we continued towards Germalam and the road is almost completely devoid of traffic. Its also beautiful as the road winds just below the hills through farmland and villages.
Eventually we got off the tarmac onto a pretty easy dirt path, along corn fields. The path winds for a kilometer or more and reaches the venue. The dirt tracks around here are good and will be fun with a lighter/ more powerful motorcycle. Just watch out for the cows. Here’s an HDR from there.
Once we reached the venue, we parked up at the main house. Someone came over running and told us that the accommodation was further down the path. Its down a tree lined path and heads into an open patch. What we didn’t know at the time was that the patch opens out to the forest directly. But, more on that later.
We got a tent for ourselves, unfortunately all the ones relatively more in the shade were gone. It was already post noon and the sun would drop behind the tree line in a while cooling things off. But, till then we’d have to manage. The tents were all lined up next to each other and they all face a campfire area at the center. Not too bad when you do not want to carry your own equipment.
The campsite is very basic but clean. Clean toilets and baths are available not too far from the tents. The parking space is definitely not an issue and they even let us park right up at the tent. That made unloading and loading easier and we could leave some of the stuff on the bike to make it easier access. We still harbored plans of exploring around the next day.
I was still trying to catch up with sleep and despite the uncomfortably warm tents, I slept like a log for a couple of hours. It was almost sundown when I woke up. Some tea other things, we made acquaintances with the other people in the campsite. It was time to watch the stars and relax. The sky was not overly cloudy and looked promising. The only issue was the lone bright light which lit up the entire campsite. I moved it to the back of one of the neighbouring tents, rendering most of our side of the campsite in darkness.
We had a boisterous extended family for company, that meant we had to step away from the tents to get any kind of peace. But, then it was their annual get together and we cannot really blame them. It was nice in fact to see a family getting away instead of suffering the Deepawali smoke and noise of the city. The other spot in the camp site is the gazebo. While it was away from the main camp area, is almost along the edge of the property. Lovely spot.
We sat around near the campfire and had a relatively early dinner. Since it was Deepawali, we did a little light painting. The first one, of the motorcycle to wish all you readers of the blog that I put up on the FaceBook page of our blog and other one of Kavitha getting in touch with her super powers.
Route to Wild Valley
A quick guide to help find your way to Wild Valley from Bangalore.
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