[SR1602]

"We're not going to Gokarna" was the painful realisation I arrived at, as I sat at my work desk staring into my laptop screen.

Rewinding a few years to sometime in April 2022, I had my first acquaintance with my friend, codename "Yeti". Yeti happens to be a classmate of my cousin sister, and little did we know that one fateful meeting would open up quite a budding bromance in the years to come. We immediately bonded over motorcycles, UFC and talks about the glorious Delhi life we used to be a part of. As we kept meeting and getting to know each other better, Yeti happened to get his first motorcycle, a Yamaha MT15. Soon, he moved to Bengaluru, and a couple of months down the line, I upgraded to the 457. Long before the more recent chain of events, we used to talk about touring and destinations to explore in India. Even though long rides weren’t my cup of tea, I still did fancy riding to Gokarna someday because of how fascinated I was with that place. I even suggested that he could rent a motorcycle in Chennai, and then we would ride from there. Of course, at that time, this was optimistic rambling because I was confident that he would go back and settle in Delhi once his PG was over, which means that this ride wasn't going to happen.

I was about 5 months into my Aprilia ownership and glancing at my holiday calendar when it suddenly struck me. Christmas ‘24 is smack dab in the middle of the week, and I hadn’t utilised any of my holidays since I joined my new organisation. While my mind usually doesn’t think this way, for the first time, my immediate thought was “ROAD TRIP”. Once I was on this train of thought, I didn’t even ponder over the destination, Gokarana, it is! I subconsciously called Yeti and just said two words, “Gokarna, Christmas?” which was met with an enthusiastic “haan bhai done!”

THE RUDE AWAKENING

I think it was about the second week of November, just a week or two after we had our confirmation call, when I started with the planning phase. Now, I am not at all the kind of guy to go ahead with impromptu plans, I need every detail and every arrangement sorted out well in advance. Sadly, despite my assumption that 40 days is enough buffer time to get a nice and affordable accommodation, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Turns out that finding the right accommodation in Gokarna during Christmas is an (impossible task)^infinity. The available ones were quite shady and far away from the beachside views that we were imagining.

More than anything, finding an accommodation with a safe parking space was the real hassle near the beach. We learnt that there are public parking areas near places like Kudle beach, but there’s no way in hell I was leaving my flashy white Maratha-Italian hottie over there. Maybe it would have been safe, but I wasn’t going to take that chance on a new bike that’s not even a year old. We did find one property, which ticked all the boxes, had its own parking but would set us back by an exorbitant 22k for 3 days, that too for a furnished outdoor tent and shared washrooms. Not happening.

Dejection was setting in real fast and the panicky overthinker in me was already prepared for a dull Chennai – Bengaluru and back solo ride. I still wanted to check what reserve options we had and gave a call to another friend who had done that route all the way up till Vagator multiple times for IBW. I explained my predicament to him, and he simply told me it’s a waste to spend that much at Gokarna, and why don’t I just check out South Goa instead? Suddenly, there’s a glimmer of hope. I am not one for the crowded and commercial Goa experience, and South Goa was anything but that. Its serenity, based on Google Street View, resembled Gokarna quite a bit, or maybe it was just my confirmation bias. After spending the next two days over multiple hour-long calls with Yeti, the destination we concluded on was Agonda, and I immediately booked an ideal beachside property that fit the bill. I left the route planning to him as he had ample friends with properties and recommendations on the route from Bengaluru to Agonda. So, around the first week of December, the plan was ready, the properties were booked, and the route we’d be taking would be:

Bengaluru – Chikkamagaluru – Agonda – Shivamogga – Bengaluru.

I would be doing two extra legs to reach Bengaluru from Chennai and return to Chennai from Bengaluru.

In terms of preparation, I didn’t have much to do apart from buying a new pair of riding pants. I already had a Viaterra Claw that I had gotten when I was riding the R15 in Delhi. But like an idiot, I made the mistake of dunking it into a bucket of detergent water to clean it inside out, which completely ruined the structural firmness of its inner materials. I would come to realise that this was a mistake long after I commenced the ride. I was still about 1200 km shy of my 2nd service due date, but I went ahead with an early service to be on the safer side and iron out any potential issues that I might face.


Luggage setup - Structurally ruined Viaterra Claw and Shima Ayro backpack


Took a test run after the 2nd service to ECR a weekend before the trip and to break in the new pants as well.


All set and prepped!

Day 1 – Chennai to Bengaluru (Solo)

I was confident that the detail-oriented freak that I was would have everything in order, but no, the troubles started as soon as I left for the parking from my door. I was planning to do this ride on my old AXO MG2 boots, which were far more comfortable than my current sport-oriented RYO T-Rex boots. As soon as I wore them and started walking out, something felt odd in the first few steps. A few more steps and "CRAAAAACKK". The plastic heel counter on the left boot just shattered. I had no time to process this, just ran back, dumped these boots in my room and without any other choice, put on the T-Rex boots against my will. Not off to a good start. Nonetheless, I bid farewell to Amma and got on with what would be the first proper long ride of my life.



As I crossed Sriperumbudur, I saw a lot of other bikers who were also strapped with luggage and presumably proceeding with their Christmas plans. A lot of them seemed pretty surprised to see an RS457 with a luggage setup. One of the bikers pointed out to me that my Claw tailbag was sagging to the right, and that's when I realised the grave error that I had committed by dunking it into the bucket of water. Its structural rigidity was completely gone. It was holding itself in position and wasn't creating any balancing problems, but it would randomly just start sagging to either side, no matter how much I'd tighten it. This did have me worried, but I didn't have any other choice but to push on with my fingers crossed.


Beautiful hills right ahead of the Pallikonda toll plaza.

As I rode further, I was also carrying a small hardtop sling that contained some quick carryables like my specs, vehicle documents and sanitiser, etc. The moment I crossed 100 kmph, it would start flying out again and again, which irritated me. So, I stopped on the side of the road, dumped into the claw and moved ahead. This also gave me a butt break and a chance to readjust the claw to a neutral position from its sagging state.


Coffee stop after crossing Krishnagiri.

I left at about 5:30 in the morning and reached Bengaluru around 11:45. Not bad, I'd say, for the sheer number of adjustment breaks I was taking. I reached Yeti's place, exchanged pleasantries and kept rambling about how I felt like I had just achieved something big by travelling a mere 300+ km on wide open highways


Much-needed rehydration.

The excitement had just started to set in because the real ride starts now. I was told by Yeti that another friend of his would also be accompanying us on his Himalayan 450 till Goa, but only on the towards journey. We chit-chatted all night and, despite having plans to doze off by 9 or 10, ended up sleeping well after 12, which is a decision that would come back to bite me very soon.

Day 2 - Bengaluru to Chikkamagaluru

We were scheduled to leave by 4, but of course neither of us woke up on time. It was about 5:45 when we were ready to leave. Yeti's friend AG was also there, and he was far more meticulous than us since he had been waiting nearly an hour while we were getting ready.


Ready to roll!


Quick stop at Neelamangala toll.


Chai-sutta break for them, chai-readjust the viaterra break for me.


Surreal scenes!

The above picture was when I forcibly told them to stop because I hadn't seen fog in over 6 years since I moved to Chennai. Yeti couldn't even see my signals and kept pushing on due to the visibility. This entire stretch just blew my mind because I guess this is some new under-construction highway which did have a lot of detours, but the roads were absolutely pristine. Unfortunately, my Insta360 didn't charge properly or something through the night because it died off long before this stretch, and I didn't even have the presence of mind to plug it into the power bank either. Missed opportunity!

All of us were riding on this stretch for the first time, and we had no idea about the food situation. It was somewhat early, around 8-9 ish, and we were well into the depths of the highway, but strangely, there were barely any eatery establishments on either side. The ones that were there said they'd only start serving around the afternoon. Once we crossed the Rajathadri Toll Plaza, we saw a Cafe Coffee Day on the other side of the road and indulged in a rather lavish breakfast.





At about 12:30 or so, we entered Chikkamagaluru. Yeti and I split towards our accommodation, Sirivasa Homestay, while AG went to his at Zostel. Our homestay was a gorgeous place in the middle of endless banana plantations. We were expecting it to be peaceful and quiet, but I think they were holding some function like a baby shower or something, so it was packed with people. We dumped our stuff, got fresh and met AG for lunch at a nearby restaurant.





The route to our homestay was extremely scenic and faced a hill called Shakunagiri. We had to stop there for pictures.




Yeti flaunting his posing prowess.


A shot of the homestay property from our balcony.





The owner of the homestay was as nice as they could be. He specially set up the patio area for our high tea before dinner. It felt a little unnecessarily romantic, but we didn't care; our priorities were already aligned with the pakodas and scintillating aroma of the coffee.

We finished our evening beverages, had dinner, chatted with the owner for a while about our remaining trip, our bikes and crashed for the night. This is when I started to feel the fatigue set in. The lack of touring experience and fitness was really showing signs. And tomorrow would be the longest and toughest leg of the trip till Goa.

To be continued...

[TheHelix0202]

Can’t wait to read the rest of the travelogue, it’s hilarious.

Regarding your oversights, live and learn, as they say!

Do update on the trip stats at the end!

[SR1602]

Day 3 - Chikkamagaluru to Agonda

This day can only be described as a thoroughbred comedy of errors, and I can actually laugh about it now since 5 months have passed. So, as I concluded in the previous chapter, I was really feeling the fatigue and exhaustion. We did manage to wake up on time this instance, but the getting ready process was slow (mostly from my end). Despite getting a somewhat decent 6-7 hours of sleep, my body wasn’t even anywhere close to 80, leave 100%. AG, being the meticulous person that he is, already checked out and was waiting for us at SH57 while we didn’t even strap our luggage onto our bikes. So obviously we had to rush now, which meant no time for pictures or anything while we were leaving. Yeti was getting very impatient with my pace to the point that he said that we’ll go to the meetup spot and only then use the air pump and all.


Yeti wasn't amused with my morning antics at all.


But still gave me time to engage in my newly acquired hobby of checking the Viaterra every 80km.

Now here’s another thing you need to know about Yeti. He’s extremely non-conformist and constantly rejects society and anything that is mainstream. So when Google Maps gave us a simple direct route onto the highway towards Shivamogga, I should have known before that it would be readily rejected. Instead, he had a more scenic route planned, which AG already knew about, and I was the only one left in the dark. Since I had already driven him irate in the morning, I thought, fine, let’s just go with the flow for a change.



Despite my discomfort, I gotta hand it to him, the route was simply gorgeous. Yeti was leading and seeing the increasing number of twisties coming up, he signalled to me to go ahead and exhibit all the skills I had amassed from the ~200 cumulative laps on BIC and MIC, and I gladly obliged. It was insanely fun, but about 20-25 minutes in, I realised my lower body was in a lot of pain. It closely resembled what I'd have at the end of the 3rd or 4th session of my track outings. The fatigue was there in full force. Now I wasn't even able to put efforts into any turn without feeling some amount of minimal pain. We were barely 50 kilometres in and I was already in bad shape. The fact that I didn't even have my morning coffee worsened the situation. I had my doubts that this was a genuine revenge plot from Yeti's side for all the delays I had caused earlier


First tea stop after the twisties, and I had a generous 40-minute break to recuperate.

With the rest and caffeine pumping through my system, I was feeling charged up and ready to take on some tarmac. We pressed on with a decent pace, crossed Shivamogga before taking another halt for breakfast somewhere before Ayanur. We were really craving dosas, but sadly, all they had left were chapatis served with chutney and some kind of korma. Not wanting to repeat the same mistakes we made yesterday, we indulged and got some fuel into our systems.





The real test was about to begin now because the Ghats awaited us. I made a mandatory fuel stop somewhere at Sagara because post that it was nearly 100 km before the next major town, Honnavar/Kumta. About two weeks before this trip commenced, I was in Bengaluru for a work event, and Yeti and I had a plan for all the stops and routes that we’d take. For a change, the non-conformist in him actually stuck to the route that we decided, while AG and I took the wrong left because I was blindly following Aprilia maps, and Yeti had kinda built up some distance ahead of us.


Even though this was my fault, I'll pass the blame to Yeti as I had made enough blunders since the morning.

Another thing you need to know about AG, is that he’s a sane person who was quite new to his bike and he was always going at safe speeds unlike the reckless buffoons that Yeti and I were. So, we had to pause at several spots across this trip for him to catch up with us. In the ghat situation, I pressed ahead a little because I thought I’d catch up with Yeti and then give him an earful for pretty much abandoning AG behind. But I kept going ahead, and soon enough, the roads were simply empty, like not a being anywhere. I knew for a fact that there’s no way he could have outrun me even if he was going full throttle through this section, which itself would have been impossible. I was quite baffled as to what was going on.



The ghats had already started, and there were barely a car or two on the road. I was all alone with no network, Yeti's location not updating on WhatsApp and AG nowhere behind me since I had torpedoed ahead quite a bit. Fortunately, my extra glitchy Aprilia maps were working perfectly fine somehow despite my phone showing no signal bars. I decided to stop ahead after a while and just wait for AG, who came in about 10 minutes later. He informed me that Yeti had taken a different route and had told him over a call while I was darting ahead to hunt for him. He said he'd meet up with us at our pre-decided checkpoint, Mirjan Fort.



It was close to 2 in the afternoon, and we had about 60km of just ghats in front of us. My patience had dwindled really low, and I just wanted to see civilisation again. AG's navigation was working fine, so I just let him maintain his comfortable pace and quickly wrapped up the ghats at my comfortable pace. In 12 years of riding, this was the toughest experience of my life. Extremely low energy, high-stress because Yeti was all alone on some other unexplored route, and it felt like my brain just wanted to expand out of my skull, destroying it in the process. And throughout all of this, the challenge was in maintaining tight mental focus because the ghats were barely 2 lanes wide with occasional buses and trucks on the oncoming side.

Finally and fortunately, I reached the T-point ahead at Honnavar, indicating the end of the ghats. I turned right and stopped for AG to catch up. I also had a protein bar and some electrolytes to regain some energy. We then rode together all the way to Mirjan Fort and greeted Yeti with some profanity-filled pleasentries, Delhi style. But of course, internally, I was more than delighted to see that he's all okay and in one piece.


Mirjan fort. Looked really mysterious and isolated on Google pictures, but was packed with tourists and heavily commercialised in real life.

We stopped for lunch ahead and then all three of us stuck together for the remaining 100-odd km. Another very peculiar incident happened when a local (possibly drunk) on an Apache 160 got over-enthusiastic and started to chase us. He first recklessly overtook Yeti, who didn't bother to engage him, then came right next to AG and non-stop kept waving at him till he waved back. Finally, I guess he wanted to show that he's defeated me by overtaking me since I was the farthest ahead by 200m or so. There was a rough patch on the road, which I saw and slowed down while cautiously moving to the left-most lane. But this local guy just came in full throttle, hit the rough patch and in the process of raising his hand to show that he has won, got launched off his motorcycle. His helmet came flying off as well, so it definitely wasn't strapped. Yeti's camera caught a more detailed and scarier POV where you can see him lose consciousness as blood started dripping from his forehead. We took him to the side, and all the locals around the area came to support pretty quickly. They had immediately called an ambulance as well. We did want to help, despite his antics, but we were riding for close to 10 hours now and still had another 40 kilometres to go. We decided to go ahead for our own sake, and regardless, we couldn't have helped more than the locals, who had already mostly taken care of the situation.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DET3b...o2MnE4MjJ6Yg==

^I don't have the video anymore, but this is the link to the uploaded version on the Paavtya Boys' Instagram page.

Finally, after 11.5 hours of riding and an umpteen incidents across the day, we made it. We bid our farewell to AG, who had to ride another 2.5 hours to North Goa, and took our diversion towards Agonda. We parked our bikes, checked into the hotel and just relished the sound of the waves from our balcony coupled with live blues music, abandoning all the worries of the world.


Destination Agonda at last!

To be continued...

Originally Posted by TheHelix0202

Regarding your oversights, live and learn, as they say!

Do update on the trip stats at the end!

Indeed, this ride was really a learning experience for me more than anything. The other two still had a decent amount of long rides in their experience but I was the noob here

And yes I'll be sure to upload the stats at the end.

[SR1602]

Day 4 and 5: Gallivanting in Goa

I didn’t really feel like I was in Goa the day before since it was already getting dark and I was beyond the peak of my exhaustion by the time we had reached. The beachy sensation felt mostly psychosomatic because I could hear the waves, but the aforementioned factors were robbing the authenticity, even though we did venture out for dinner at night. But oh boy, I was in for a treat as soon as I woke up in the morning. I think I slept close to 10 hours, and Yeti probably an hour or two more. Sadly, that still wasn’t enough for me to feel completely recovered. But glancing out of the balcony under the bright lights of the sun, the whisk of the ocean’s natural salty scent entering my nostrils, now it legitimately felt like vacay mode!

Agonda is just a beautiful place, and it was pretty much exactly like we envisioned it. There’s just one main street that’s probably 1.5-2km long, and everything is happening in just that tiny area. There are establishments on either side, and of course, loads of beach shacks. Despite it being Christmas, there was barely any bustle, which did bode well for us since we were very content with the tranquillity. For these two days, let the pictures do most of the talking.


View of the streets right outside our hotel.


Breakfast with a view indeed!


The cat distribution system honoured our presence.


Yeti loves to swim, so we went about looking for different beaches across the area. Cola Beach was the first one.


Beautiful beach with minimal crowd.


The only departmental store in the area where we were making multiple rounds a day for cigs, juice and various knick-knacks.


We visited this shack called Tito's Orange Sky, two establishments ahead of our hotel. The waiter was delighted to hear about our travel story, and when we asked him for the specials, he ended the list with "Hookah bhi mil jayega sir". There's no way two seasoned delhibois were saying no to that.


Lit-up streets to celebrate Christmas.


Our hotel had this secret backdoor straight to the beach. Waking up from the bed and taking this route first in the morning felt weirdly empowering in its own way.


Pita and hummus pretty much became a part of almost every meal we had.


This was the route to Butterfly Beach. Before going to Cola, we tried coming here first. Yeti was all hyped to take this entire route on his bike, but I declined straight away because I am not putting my mini crotch-rocket through this abuse. However, I did tell him that we could go there on foot the following day, and I'd gladly accompany him.


GTA San Andreas vibes but more civilised.


After taking this arduous ~5km walk, we found out that there's an alternate route that pretty much any two-wheeler could easily take.


Butterfly Beach was a total disappointment. It was extremely rocky, extremely crowded and not a pleasant experience. I tried jumping into the water for a change, and the depth declines so steeply, I nearly lost my footing and drowned till the waves pushed me back to shore. We stayed for less than 20 minutes, out of which most was spent catching our breath after the tiringly long walk.


Shitty experience on the whole but really good cardio.


We skipped lunch since we were walking at that time and went straight to Tito's at around 6 in the evening to get some food in our systems.


I saw this restaurant, Kopi Desa, while entering Agonda and the aesthetics of the place immediately caught my eye. You can see the pizzas getting ready right in front of your eyes as the oven is just at the edge of the counter where we had our seats. Pretty cool experience and delicious food!

To be continued...

[BL4CK.S7EED]

I swear, I would have absolutely shredded that trail to Butterfly Beach, but maybe it wasn't worth the risk considering we were miles away from our homes. My Japanese baby owes you big time for saving her from my wrath. Excited for the next part!

-yeti

[SR1602]

Sorry, y'all haven't been keeping well the past few weeks, and I got piled up with work after that. I'll try to wrap up the remaining two chapters in one go.

Day 6: Goa to Shivamogga


Life indeed felt like a movie across those past 60 hours, but we finally had to wake up to the disappointing realisation that it was time to abandon the gorgeous paradise they call Agonda and return to our mundane city lives.

We woke up a little early that day because we had to rush to clean and lubricate the bikes’ chains, and we wanted to soak up as much Goa as we could.


The steeds getting TLCed


Tried a different restaurant apart from Tito's but the gorgeous view remains consistent.


Someone wasn't able to resist the smell of those delicious sausages.


It was tough saying goodbye to this place

Now, since AG wasn't there on the return run, Yeti and I could maintain our reckless buffon pace without worries. Keeping that in mind, we leisurely left after checkout at 12:00 PM. As we were leaving, the hotel guys stopped us and said that we needed to pay for all the water bottles after day 1. Apparently, only two bottles are free, and that too only for the first day. Rather weird practice and kinda left a sour taste in my mouth after a wonderful experience through the previous two days. Nonetheless, we pushed on without making a fuss. Our goal was to reach Shivamogga before nightfall, so we kept hustling without any stops.


Took exactly one break for tea around 4 o'clock somewhere near Sagara.


This is the point where I saw my rear tyre and said to myself, "Shit." Before leaving for Goa, I got a rim replacement done and took it for balancing just to be sure. The shop-owner told me that this tyre definitely will not last the next 2000 km. I didn't buy his words because I felt he was just trying to make a sale. But at this point, I could notice that the threads were starting to become visible across the centre. Although credit to Eurogrip, the tyre didn't feel noticeably off despite the condition.


Reached our hotel just around nightfall and thankfully before it was too dark.


We booked a fancier stay just for this leg since the price was pretty good. Malnad Shire is the name of the hotel.


Two hungry beasts, each with their individual kebab platters.


And of course, some decadent indulgence before we called it a day.

Day 7: Shivamogga to Bengaluru


Again, we woke up so leisurely that we almost missed breakfast. And I wasn't going to do that since this was the only buffet we'd have across the trip.




View of the hotel from the balcony.


I feel this picture signified the actual end of the trip.


Now that we were done with all the core riding, it was time to pose for assorted display pictures.

All the exploration was done, and all the fun was had. Now the only priority was to reach Bengaluru in one piece. My non-conformist compadre decided to finally give me a glimpse of wide open roads by taking us through Chitradurga and onto NH48 towards Bengaluru.


Absolutely beautiful stretch on Shivamogga-Chitradurga road.


Sir Yeti in all his glory.




And some more of me.

Once we were on NH48, time flew by pretty fast. Wide open roads and a raging 48 bhp Italian roadster meant the distance was vanishing even before we could realise. I still wasn't pushing too much because I had to be considerate about Yeti's power limitation.


Final sutta break at the start of NICE road.


And we're back home.

Now, what was supposed to happen next was that I rested that day and left for Chennai the very next morning, but let's just say this ride got a bit of a bonus extension which will be covered in the last chapter right after.

Originally Posted by BL4CK.S7EED

I swear, I would have absolutely shredded that trail to Butterfly Beach, but maybe it wasn't worth the risk considering we were miles away from our homes. My Japanese baby owes you big time for saving her from my wrath. Excited for the next part!

-yeti

Hahaha, someone's got to keep that non-conformist rebel in check . Great to see you here, bud!

[SR1602]

Day 8: Another day in Bengaluru Part 1

After returning to Bengaluru, I think I subconsciously made up my mind mid-sleep that I might as well stay another day over there. While I did get up early as scheduled to leave for Chennai, the laziness really crept in, and my mental dialogue was as follows: "oh, what the hell, what am I even going to do in Chennai considering New Year's just around the corner?" And, needless to say, my intrusive thoughts won without even trying. Since I was up, I just went downstairs to take a look at the bike, and I was startled to see its condition.


She was caked in layers of dust and muck across.




Barely any front mudguard + rains on the previous leg meant the cockpit wasn't spared either

The first order of priority for the day after a morning coffee and breakfast was to get the bike cleaned properly.




Shiny shiny!


Stepped out for lunch with Yeti, and I couldn't believe I found a place serving Bedmi Puri and Sabzi. Took me straight back to the Delhi days.

Yeti regularly rides with a group called BikerBudz in Bengaluru. They happened to organize a ride for the same night, and they already knew about his escapade to Goa. They were really keen to meet both of us, and of course, we gladly obliged.



Now I only knew that the destination of the ride was Arkavathi Lake, but I had no clue about the route that led there. Their group was dominated by REs and Dukes that can somewhat handle loose terrain. The RS was really struggling once the tarmac ended, and I was reduced to puttering speeds. The others were also happily saddling over speedbreakers and bumps while I was the only one coming to a dead halt before each of them. Made for a pretty funny scene in the video they shot.


Beautiful display of stars at Arkavathi Lake.


Parting shot at the end of the ride.

Day 8: Another day in Bengaluru Part 2

As I had already decided that I'd leave after New Year's was done, I got up in the morning to grab some breakfast. However, I was greeted with a different and more alarming surprise when I went to start the bike.


The previous night's ride to Arkavathi had completely decimated the tyre.

Again, I didn't feel anything significantly off while riding, but at this point, it seemed visually dangerous. So, I postponed breakfast and went to get a new tyre first. Although I had plans to upgrade to something like a Rosso 4 or Sportec M7, there was no time to hunt for those. I scouted for the nearest Eurogrip dealer and went straight to them.





After changing the tyres, I headed to the Aprilia showroom in Marathali to get my service reminder reset. Apparently, if that reminder stays for more than 1500 km, the bike automatically goes into limp mode till it reaches an SVC. Although I wasn't that deep into the limit, I still didn't want to risk it. I also got the tyres and brakes refitted and torqued properly. Gotta hand it to Avant-Garde Motors, I reached there and within 10 minutes, everything was done. Superb service!


Tuono 660, probably the only one of its kind in India.

With the bike stuff taken care of, it was time to freely indulge in some Benne Dosa.


Never understood the fuss about Bengaluru traffic till I was assimilated into it myself.




But it was completely worth it for this Godly wood-fired dosa.

Day 10: Back to Chennai at last

I was supposed to leave for Chennai as soon as I got back to Bengaluru, but that didn't happen. I postponed it for New Year's, but that didn't happen. It was already mid-week, and I thought I might as well just go on Saturday, but that didn't happen either. Finally, on the 5th of January, a Sunday, knowing that I need to be in the office on Monday and I absolutely cannot delay things further, I finally mustered the motivation to get back home. Given a choice, I would have probably extended my stay by another week


Yeti and his roommate had their own mini-ride planned and decided to give me company till Hosur.


Lunch stop.


The ultimate parting shot. I was feeling a little gutted while clicking this picture because the past two weeks were arguably the most enjoyable two weeks of my life.

The return to Chennai was entirely dull and uneventful. I felt like I had seen it all by this point, and nothing really fazed me. I was practically riding on autopilot and didn't even take a break for almost 200km.


Paused for tailbag straightening somewhere near Ambur.


The only break I forced myself to take was just before Sriperumbudur.


And just like that, we've reached back to where it all started.


The final stats.

SUMMARY: What I learned from this soujourn

• Touring is a beautiful activity. I have always been a hardcore Sunday sprints or track kinda guy, but this trip opened my eyes to a different format of riding, which I was reluctant to try for a long time. I genuinely regretted the numerous occasions I had skipped just because I didn't even bother to give it a shot under the stereotype that purpose-built sportsbikes aren't meant for this.
  
  
• Karnataka is a beautiful region. I'd say this is a corollary of the above point, but my God the change in scenery as soon as you step out even 50km from Bengaluru, is just mind-boggling. This is partially true for Chennai, but totally wasn't the case when I lived in Delhi. I really want to come back to places like Honnavar, Jog Falls and explore that region again properly.
  
  
• The RS is a beautiful bike. Is it an Ideal touring machine? Faaar from it. It's uncomfortable, guzzles fuel and struggles the moment the tarmac disappears even by a fraction. But it's endearing in a way because it makes you feel like it's going to get you through all these tough situations and give it its all despite the shortcomings. On the plus side, the oodles of torque and the navigation system (which worked like a peach somehow throughout) were extremely useful across this journey.
  
  
• Final word - Going to be extremely cliché and state that this experience has indeed been life changing, but I feel I have enough justification as to why it was. Will I tour again? Yes! Will I tour frequently? Maybe not with the RS, especially not this year. I have some track skills to hone, so focus will be directed towards that for this year (subject to situations). But all in all, this was a supremely delightful experience, and needless to say, I enjoyed it to its fullest. Getting to relive every bit as I finished writing this travelogue put a smile on my face multiple times. I'll be more punctual with my next, whenever it happens, as I feel I feel it might help capture those emotions more accurately. Till then, thank you all for reading till this point. Ride safe and ciao!

FIN!

[gururajrv]

Loved every bit of your write up! Doing such long rides on a sport machine was my dream when I got my Ninja 300. But, life had other plans and I had to let go of it after riding it for barely 6k kms. Regardless, my soul keeps craving rides/long drives and I hope to take your post as some motivation to do just that!

Wishing you many more million miles with that Italian beauty!