[asdon]

Originally Posted by guyfrmblr

This was clearly evident from what I observed in Kadur - Tumkur stretch. T-Jet was just flying. One yellow board Innova was desperately trying to overtake you but was left in the dust at the end.

A real OT here : After the photoshoot on NH 206, I decided to do an eco drive for rest of the section, but still end up with you guys at Tumkur toll plaza, How?

[guyfrmblr]

Originally Posted by asdon

A real OT here : After the photoshoot on NH 206, I decided to do an eco drive for rest of the section, but still end up with you guys at Tumkur toll plaza, How?

That was one more funny incident. We stopped at a hotel some 10 km after Arsikere for a small snack break. Then Schoudary mentioned that you were on eco mode and hence decided to wait for you to arrive there. We had some snacks and soft drinks but there was no sign of you. We waited for additional 15 minutes but still no sign of your car. We thought you were driving at 30-40 kmph and decided to wait for 5 more minutes but the result was negative. Then we assumed that you slept in your car and decided to depart from there.

What actually happened was that you failed to spot us near the hotel and we failed to spot your car passing. Came across a red Punto near Tumkur toll but thought that its some other Punto. Again spotted the same Punto near Kanakpura NICE road, but this time I noticed the red dust (which was present in the resort entry road) on the car. Got suspicious and asked my dad to check your car number in the NH-206 photoshoot pic in the camera. It was matching. We were like . I couldn't recognize your car at Tumkur as your car doesn't sport any T-BHP sticker. It was like hare and the tortoise story at the end.

[KarthikK]

@guyfrmblr - those immature cabbies man, you overtake them once and they feel threatened and start trying all sorts of dirty tricks. I didn't bother too much or rather, didn't allow them to bother me much

Originally Posted by asdon

A real OT here : After the photoshoot on NH 206, I decided to do an eco drive for rest of the section, but still end up with you guys at Tumkur toll plaza, How?

Originally Posted by guyfrmblr

What actually happened was that you failed to spot us near the hotel and we failed to spot your car passing. We were shocked to see your car near Tumkur toll and even more shocked to see you near Kanakpura NICE road. It was like hare and the tortoise story at the end.

ssjr0498 had told me to lead the convoy since my car had the MMI GPS device and I could get route information properly on where to join Tumkur road, bypassing the city traffic. I vaguely remember blasting past a red punto somewhere before Tumkur, and all the others also followed me one by one. I didn't notice properly and didn't assume it could be asdon (I thought he had put his car under some tree and dozed off for a nap). Now I am wondering whether that red punto was really asdon's

[chetan_l]

I had planned to process and upload my photos this weekend, but there is too much of peer pressure!

Like @royalcruiser, i do not have too many people snaps - so please bear with me. With @SChoudhury, @KarthikK and others doing the photo shoot, there is bound to be plenty of good ones anyway.

On NH48, just off NH4 - the final meeting point. Scheduled meeting time: 6 AM. Cars present: 1


With sunlight, cometh the gang. The first of the get-to-knows just before we depart on BH48.


On the way from Chikmagalur towards the resort:


The badminton court was our impromptu parking lot where we were also served our welcome drink.


A view of the western ghats from the balcony of our building.


Post lunch, a few of the members got around chatting about cars & bikes over some coke and...er, more coke!


The small pond where some of the shutterbugs got lucky with the birds



@royalcruiser capturing the sunset on his lens


The evening bonfire, and in-house DJ setup!! KiloAlpha's Figo was the ICE of choice to play some music. (Sorry for the out-of-focus image)


Sunrise over the hills


Tadpoles at the pond - looks like they were being farmed there!


And last but not the least, how can I miss the biker boys?! Thank you guys - you were the live-wire of the drive

[asdon]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

I vaguely remember blasting past a red punto somewhere before Tumkur, and all the others also followed me one by one. I didn't notice properly and didn't assume it could be asdon (I thought he had put his car under some tree and dozed off for a nap). Now I am wondering whether that red punto was really asdon's

Yes, That was me, I told Choudhury that I am not going to fly anymore as the road was open for a cruising speed, which I missed for 2 days. I was doing about 90kmph till Tumkur toll, I saw you guys taking Tumkur Bypass and followed. And the cabbie incident happened with me too, with the same innova, I overtook it once and saw him do the flashing all the way till I took a break to have some water. So two funny stories we get out of the trip, GuyfrmBlr meeting me at NICE road and Surjit comming from Aldur to meet the convoy and I, Choudhury and bikers waiting for him at Chikmagalur.

[Alter_Ego]

Originally Posted by asdon

Surjit comming from Aldur to meet the convoy and I, Choudhury and bikers waiting for him at Chikmagalur.

Till date I have no clue how I landed up there.Was following kiloalpha and then my check engine forced me to stop and then I lost him.And I was stuck in a god forsaken road with trees on both sides with no range on my phone and the check engine glaring right on my face.And then I thought I had taken some wrong turn so took a U turn to retrace where I came from and tahda!! saw the whole convoy on the same road waiting for me.Never felt so stupid ever before.

[royalcruiser]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

@Guyfrmblr - amazing snaps and nice captions. post any remaining ones too
@royalcruiser - fantastic bird photos man, those photos rock! glad to see you covered the breakfast meet too!
@condor - beautiful pictures sir, especially the ones of the long train-like convoy with coffee estates in the background. Please post any remaining pictures that you have sir.

Thanks man! It's that time of the year again - will be headed to Ranganthittu sometime one of the coming weekends for birding. Have PM'ed some links from last time - check if you'd want to join

Originally Posted by chetan_l

The small pond where some of the shutterbugs got lucky with the birds

You should've waited for just some more time. Loads of White Eye's dropped by for their morning fix

[asdon]

Originally Posted by royalcruiser

Thanks man! It's that time of the year again - will be headed to Ranganthittu sometime one of the coming weekends for birding. Have PM'ed some links from last time - check if you'd want to join

Please let me know when you are planning, I am up for this. And I have mailed a small plan for the Maha Trip we discussed, have a look.

[KarthikK]

Continuing from my previous post...

Like I said before, there were lots of people in the resort that evening. So many people, that I lost track of who were BHPians and who weren't. Meanwhile most of the (true) BHPians were waking up to a sultry, humid evening here after their naps.

I vaguely remember coming out of the dining area after tea with royalcruiser, arin_12, n_aditya and chetan_l to the reception area, to find 8-10 BHPians seated in a round table conference discussing Surjith's mysterious Safari issues. The badminton court had a few anonymous children (other guests) chasing the shuttle cock from one end of the court to the other, since it was windy. Some more anonymous children were playing football with volleyball or perhaps playing volleyball with football. Either way it didn't matter, because we joined in the round table conference. I was interested more in the refreshments at that point, so I left them to discuss the troubleshooting and automobile guru ssjr0498 nailed down the issue to blown turbos, the lack of engine oil circulation in turbos, etc.

Meanwhile asdon came up to us around dusk and told us we would be getting our own private team-BHP bonfire, so we wouldn't have to worry about anonymous guests' kids kicking footballs at us, or having to play antakshari with some unknown techies. There was a small open yard next to the bike garage. The resort staff setup some chairs and a bonfire. Now the bonfire was special - it had a mind of its own. It would increase the flame when it wanted, and decrease the intensity when it wanted. Once or twice, the bonfire even decided to explode - the wood pieces just crumbled away like a pack of cards and the fire got extinguished. Now who on earth sets up a bonfire over a flat metal table of all things, god knows who gave them the idea!

Meanwhile royalcruiser, condor and chetan_l were planning up ways to capture stars and star trails on the camera, since the starry sky was so clearly visible in the night from this unpolluted place. After they decided that a tripod was compulsory for this, they dropped the plan for that night

The bonfire



Now on the other side of the bonfire, people started to mingle and talk and all that, but there was one problem - music! No bonfire party is complete without music! Now how do you play music in an open yard? The resort guys didn't have speakers or audio systems, and even if they had it, the yard didn't have electrical points. In true-blue BHPian 'out-of-the-box' thinking, Condor suggested that someone bring their car into the yard and play music through the car's ICE. Eureka moment! KiloAlpha volunteered to bring his Figo and he was the DJ along with a few other volunteers.


The next 2 hours were full of refreshments, snacks and chatting with all the BHPians about anything and everything under the sun. The discussions ranged from travelling, food, hotels, bikes to something as remotely connected to team-bhp as films also. Aviorp, rk_sans, n_aditya, shamanth, ku69rd and myself were involved in a lot of bike and travel related discussions throughout the evening. Other BHPians were also simultaneously involved in general discussions in the bonfire area. Hats off to asdon for arranging the refreshments and snacks' service at this area for all the members and their families.

After this bonfire, the group set out to have a late dinner at the dining area by around 10.30 or so. There was a waiting queue outside the dining area to get a table. I have seen far smaller queues in crowded B'lore restaurants like MTR, so a dinner table queue at a remote coffee estate 320km from Bangalore was a bit surprising. We finally managed to get some tables at the biker shack adjoining the main restaurant. Let me recollect the dinner menu - it was some weird combination of veg fried rice, aloo palak, pulkas and jamuns for dessert. We had to wait for plates to arrive. When the plates arrived, the spoons were missing so we waited some more. When the spoons arrived, the items were out of stock and they had to prepare the stuff again, so we waited a little more. Finally by the time we all finished dinner over BHP-style gossip, and set out for our respective rooms, it was close to midnight. That was the end of day 1.

The mugshots and individual photoshoots come on day 2. To be continued...

[royalcruiser]

Originally Posted by asdon

Please let me know when you are planning, I am up for this. And I have mailed a small plan for the Maha Trip we discussed, have a look.

Sure, will do! Was going to reply to that email, but was completely held up - will definitely reply tomorrow and plan that one

[shamanth]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

Aviorp, rk_sans, n_aditya, shamanth, ku69rd and myself were involved in a lot of bike and travel related discussions throughout the evening.

Have to say Biker boys presence made lot of us to rethink on biking, who had left bike riding for four wheeler. And thanks for them to give lot of comparisons with today's bikes available in market, how to ride in different conditions and all about protective gears. I myself had a great time since i am process of upgrading my bike soon.

Avijit did organize it just great. The way he organized the camp fire even though resort fellow was telling us they will have only one camp fire for all and changing of food menu(pepper chicken) at night.

Karthikk, thanks for great photos. Now i have the best photo of my ANHC ever taken at Nelamangala
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/attach...s-dsc_0001.jpg

[KarthikK]

Sunday morning was quite humid and warm even before sunrise. Shamanth and I went downstairs to wash/wipe our cars to remove the mammoth layers of dust. royalcruiser and chetan_l had already gone down to the lake to do some bird watching and capture pictures. After a cup of hot tea, Asdon and I went down to join them and shortly, we were joined by aviorp, shamanth and shreyan.

Asdon was getting irritated by the swarms of tadpoles swimming in the lake and decided to drop some hiroshima / nagasaki style stone-bombs into the water to disturb them

Meanwhile, royalcruiser was busy spotting kingfishers, white-eyes and humming birds in another corner. Aviorp was in his own world trying to find stones to throw along the water surface and make them bounce. Soon he got bored and joined the rest of us who were discussing cars and bikes as usual. It turned out to be a bird-disturbing session at the end, we made so much noise there I think

Here are some shots of the bird watching session -


chetan_l unleashing his weapons of long distance photography



Reaching the lake at dawn



What are these irritating black creatures? Asdon scouting for places to bomb



Royalcruiser busy bird-spotting and bird-shooting



Tranquility- a (HDR) snapshot of the serene lake at daybreak



The dried up flora at the lake banks





Ripples in the water - a lateral shot



(L-R) Shreyan (ssjr0498) and Shamanth



Avinash (aviorp) disappointed during his stone-bouncing spree



BHP discussion on the lake bank



Sun was now fully up in the sky, lighting up the surrounding forest trees


After a while here, it got hotter and we all went up to have breakfast, sometime by 8.30am. Post-breakfast, asdon got down to settling the bills with the resort staff, while the rest of us freshened up and packed our bags to get ready for the departure from Eagle Eye resort.

The main photoshoot happened after breakfast before we were about to leave. The photoshoot will follow in my next post. To be continued...

[ssjr0498]

All of us were shocked to see asdon appear out of no where in front of us!

Someone should have captured the look on supriyo's face when both of us looked at each other in awe! Seeing the punto suddenly appear ahead of us!

The other most hillarious incident being when all of us were looking for Surjit and bam! He appeared from the other side! Boy! That was hillarious!


@Karthik: your car was "unrealy" clean and boy is it fast or what! The stint on NICE road was awesome!
@Supriyo: to your ritz. Boy can you drive or what! Remember the twisties on our way back? Those MRF Zlo's rock!!

@royal: brother, learnt a lot about camera's and taking pics from you! Need to try it out on my camera now.

Looking forward for another excursion ;-)

Cheers,
Shrey

PS: guys, my name is "Shreyansh" not "Shreyan". Its a little difficult to pronounce hence the short form "Shrey"

Originally Posted by KarthikK

ssjr0498 had told me to lead the convoy since my car had the MMI GPS device and I could get route information properly on where to join Tumkur road, bypassing the city traffic. I vaguely remember blasting past a red punto somewhere before Tumkur, and all the others also followed me one by one. I didn't notice properly and didn't assume it could be asdon (I thought he had put his car under some tree and dozed off for a nap). Now I am wondering whether that red punto was really asdon's

[ku69rd]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

The main photoshoot happened after breakfast before we were about to leave. The photoshoot will follow in my next post. To be continued...

Karthik,
Wonderful literature, you sure making your english teachers/professors very proud of you

[n_aditya]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

Like I said before, there were lots of people in the resort that evening. So many people, that I lost track of who were BHPians and who weren't. Meanwhile most of the (true) BHPians were waking up to a sultry, humid evening here after their naps.

The mugshots and individual photoshoots come on day 2. To be continued...

Yeah, there were so many people i myself got mighty confused.

I was fighting sleep in the afternoon post lunch so that i could sleep well at night and it helped. Couldn't stay up late (past midnight) so excused myself from the chit chat on the badminton court and hit the sack.

The ride back was awesome. After the bumpy roads, the smooth tarmac with nice twists and turns was a blessing.

We should do a 2N stay next time. That'll give us time to do some sightseeing.

Originally Posted by shamanth

Have to say Biker boys presence made lot of us to rethink on biking, who had left bike riding for four wheeler. And thanks for them to give lot of comparisons with today's bikes available in market, how to ride in different conditions and all about protective gears. I myself had a great time since i am process of upgrading my bike soon.

We had a splendid time too. Jan and Feb was biking nirvana for me. Was traveling almost every other weekend with the ninja. And the boys are already planning another overnighter in March.

Originally Posted by shamanth

Avijit did organize it just great. The way he organized the camp fire even though resort fellow was telling us they will have only one camp fire for all and changing of food menu(pepper chicken) at night.

Yeah, hats off to Avijit. That was some really good planning Avi, and it does take a lot of effort. Cheers to you.

So time to make him the official organizer for our meets henceforth?