The lazy person that I am, this post is coming after several months of when the ride actually happened but finally it is here!
During my last ride to Shiradi and Charmadi ghats (
link), I had just fallen in love with the idea of riding in rain though hills and forests. Rain just enhances the beauty and serenity of such places and riding through them on a bike is the best way to experience that.
So the next ride was planned to a destination that would take us through Bandipur forest and Wayanad district which sees a lot of rainfall in the monsoon season. The destination was the White House Restaurant in Puduppadi, Kerela. A total distance of 620 kms that we wanted to cover in a day.
I floated the plan in the BROZ(Bangalore Riders of Z800) group. Pradeep and Pradyumna decided to join me for the ride which was amazing since I was looking for some company to do the longish ride. The plan was to meet at 4 am at Mysore Road/Nice Road junction on 5th August Saturday. I got the tank topped up at Shell, washed the bike and cleaned and lubed the chain the previous night.
We all were up at 3 am and exchanged messages to ensure that everyone else was up. We met at the planned meeting point at 4:30 am. Since I knew the route, I led the on-way ride while Pradeep volunteered to sweep. It was dark and given that Mysore Highway has a lot of junctions, we rode slow. Just 1 hour into the ride and it started to drizzle. We had waterproof jackets and pants but the sky grew dark as we rode on, signaling possibility of heavy rain ahead. So we stopped and Pradeep and I wore our raincoats that we had purchased from Decathlon while Pradyumna put his trust on the waterproof lining of his Dainese riding jacket.
Putting on rain gear
This turned out to be a good decision as the drizzle changed to rain as we rode further. It was round 6 am that we reached the outer ring road junction just outside Mysore. We decided to take the bypass instead of getting inside the city. After taking left at Mysore-Ooty road, it started to rain heavily but it was daylight with sparse traffic and smooth tarmac and we kept riding towards Gundlupet. In between we stopped at a petrol bunk for refueling and then continued to ride in the rain. We took a right at Gundlupet towards Wayanad and were greeted by the sight of cloud covered hills. The rain was relentless but so were we. We kept riding and entered Bandipur forest area. Dense forest, heavy rain, smooth roads and deers being startled by the inline-4 sound, the 3 Zs kept cruising until we got out of the forest area and entered Kerala.
We finally decided to stop for breakfast at a small place and had some appam and egg curry. Riding gear had protected me well from the rain. Except for some rain seeping in to my socks, I was mostly dry. Pradeep was also well protected by his raincoat. Pradyumna had forgotten to zip his rain liner completely and that let some water to get through and wet a part of his t-shirt. Overall, it was not bad considering the heavy rain that we were riding through.
Breakfast
Predator eyeing the prey
We started riding again after the breakfast and entered Wayanad district in sometime. That’s when the cornering fun began. I was running on new Michelin Pilot Power 3 tyres. Pradeep had Michelin PR2s and Pradyumna had Metzeller S7 at the front and Michelin PR4 at the rear which is supposed to have the best wet grip in its class. The tyres performed really well for all of us. I never felt any loss of traction on the wet roads. But then we were riding with constraint and care as the roads in Wayanad are not very wide and have several blind corners where cars coming from the opposite side tend to overtake foolishly. Stating the obvious but cornering was the best part of the ride. As we exited Wayanad district, we stopped at the Lakkidi view point from where the real ghat section begins. The view was spectacular. We spent 10 minutes there clicking photos and enjoying the view.
We descended the ghats and finally reached The White House Restaurant at 10:30 am. We were greeted by puzzled looks of waiters and customers who could not believe 3 people entering the place in heavy riding gear and that too in such heavy rain. We went past the curious onlookers to find a table for 6 as we needed space for our gear. Now, this restaurant is “quick” in the sense that you need to sit quickly, order quickly, eat fast and make way for others waiting to be seated and we could sense this in the waiter’s body language as he waited impatiently for us to take off our helmets, gloves, raincoats, jackets, boots and even socks. We were at ease but the waiters were not. We ordered parota and chicken curry as that was the only thing available for breakfast. We told the waiter that we rode all the way from Bangalore to have fish and we would not leave until we get one. We were told that lunch time starts at 12 noon and there will be no fish and biryani until then. Probably the waiter thought that we would leave but boy was he wrong. Finally, we were served biryani at 11:30 and we happily hogged for the next 30 minutes. At 12 noon , much to the relief of the waiters, we started gearing up again and finally left the place at 12:15 pm. The Rain God was watching us intently and made sure that the monsoon ride live up to its name. It had stopped raining the moment we had reached the restaurant and it started raining again the moment we stepped out.
Yummy Biryani
Juggad
Fresh from taking a long break and having hot delicious food, we were back to having fun on the ghats. Pradyumna, with his water cutting PR4s, led the way up this time. We took a small break for fuelling up and then continued riding until we were out of Wayanad and Bandipur forest. Finally, the rain stopped. We stopped too for a small photo session and then continued further before finally stopping at a CCD just 100 kms shy of Bangalore.
Refueling on the way back
We reached back Bangalore by 6:30 pm and after thanking each other for the wonderful company in the wonderful ride, we said goodbyes and split up to head back our respective homes.
The bike was dirty and so was I. I decided to prioritize myself over the bike this time and headed straight back home for a long hot shower while the bike had to wait overnight for a shower the next day. My wife always welcomes me with a happy concerned expression when I get back from a ride and this time was no different except that she took my bag and opened it immediately to see what’s inside and breathed a sigh of relief. I had remembered to bring her Fish Biryani from the White House!