October 1, 10.30pm:
Harish called up and suggested a new place to which we all could go for a day's trip... This was the third place that we were thinking of from the past two days and we did not want to waste Gandhi Jayanti by any means :)
Finally!... At 11pm, we decided upon Talakaadu and I slept at around12.45pm, dreaming of going to a new place, imagining all greenery and what not!
October 2, Gandhi Jayanti and Eed (Ramzan)
4.50 in the morning and my phone rang... It was the alarm that I had set for the day... Having slept so late, I could barely open my eyes; on the second thought, did I have any choice? :) :) No. Vinay , Chandrakanth and me got up and were ready by 6.30. We had taken all essential things, ( clothes, to be specific, as we were desperate to get into some water amidst the natural surroundings) and set off towards Harish's house. Reaching there, we spent a few minutes doing some last minute checks and route discussion. Harish had the route decided on the previous day and hence we did not have much to do. Vedu and Madan were ready on Vedu's brand new bike and the rest of us got into Harish's car.
A small note on Harish's car before going further: The Maruti 800 was truly maintenance free :) The thick layer of dust inside and outside said it all. To add to it, one of the rear tyres was low on air, to compensate for which, we had to place Chandrakanth with precision on the rear seat :) One should note that it is a tough job to properly and strategically position a "dynamic" person like him :) Next thing, there was no space for the luggage as the boot was totally occupied by the LPG cylinder... We managed somehow and at last... we started! :)
We took the Airport road, Richmond Circle, NR road (Corporation), Got on to the flyover and then to the old Madras road (SH 17). The road was wonderful; flat, four lane with a divider in between. We went on, talking and planning for the day and as usual, Chandrakanth went asleep. On the way, we got the air pressure checked and headed towards Ramanagaram. Harish had a long standing wish to take us all to "Kamath's Lokaruchi" dining place which is about 5km from Ramanagaram... so, we did stop there to have breakfast. I was amazed by the number of people there. It was just 8.10 in the morning and there were many (about 150) people and people were still pouring in all the time. We took the buffet breakfast priced at Rs.60 and the food was good ( the only exception was the Masala dosa which was very much average to tell the least). After having a solid meal, we went to the adjoining site - "Janapada loka" but to our disappointment, it was closed for the day (Gandhi Jayanti you know...). Never mind, we had other places to see... We set off again at 9 and reached Maddur. We took a diversion some 3 km after Maddur and there we were, struggling on SH 33. We had just moved from wonderful roads to somewhat bad roads... 15-20 km later, it got even worse. We had to take a diversion to go to Talakaadu and hence we took some road( I don't know what road it was) and it was one of the worst roads that I have ever seen. Pot-holes... no, the holes were big! I'll call them barrel-holes :). It was pathetic! It was like driving through some dirt track created by a huge heard of wild buffaloes! You could never anticipate what would come next on the road! The poor vehicle! It could do no more than 25km/hr on that stretch... and whenever the speed exceeded that, there would be some thing (a huge hump or a steep barrel-hole) to dampen our spirits... Driving on such roads pays! It improves patience :)
We managed to reach Talakaadu after 4 hours from the time we started from Bangalore! We were happy to have reached but were already worried thinking of the road to cover while going back. Mean while, Vedu and Madan were also enjoying their ride :)
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