[pjbiju]

To lure you into this travelogue. A glimpse of the trip. Can you guess which place this is?


One of my best friends was getting married. It was the news everyone in our circle was waiting to hear. It was our turn to witness and celebrate the fall of the last standing bachelor of the group. I never attended the weddings of any of my first cousins. There were all held in Kerala, simply too far to have attended from where I was. So the only wedding I attended in my family was, yes, my own until my brothers followed suit. But this one, no matter how far, I had to go. And then if possible take the family along too. After all, I still remember how he had rejoiced and even brought me a gift on the day I had laid down my freedom. I had to have my revenge. So I too bought a gift, one that he will keep constantly looking at and be reminded of the terrible mistake he had made. Actually he is a gem of a person and no matter how much I wish ill of him, he is going to enjoy his married life and his newfound friend and then for his own good, forget all of us.

His wedding was to be solemnized at the oldest Catholic Church in the blue mountains, at St. Mary’s Church built in 1870. I did not know anything about that church until he called me to break the news.

I immediately started looking at berth availability in trains. They were available in plenty. But the Coimbatore express left Pune at 2:00 a.m. It is an odd time to find some conveyance to get to the station. For the typical Puneri autowallahs, midnight strikes at around 9.00 p.m. and almost all of them retreat into their dens like scared rabbits. The few brave ones that remain on the roads after that may cause a heart attack when they tell you the fare for any destination. Well, I think I should write an article on these people some day. The last and only time I took that train 2 years back, we had spent a harrowing two hours at the station during which we had squashed countless mosquitoes within the palm of our hands. That was for this trip.

But still I had no other choice. There were no flights to Ooty. I am sure many of my colleagues would have gladly agreed to drop me over Ooty from a plane had they owned one. They would very conveniently forget the parachute. But I know they will make up for it by buying the most expensive wreath for my tomb. So I kept tracking the berth availability in the Coimbatore express without actually booking the tickets. I had a slight smile on my face then. Finally the availability turned to RAC and then to WL and I was grinning from ear to ear. That’s what I was waiting for.

I immediately turned to my wife “There are no tickets available, it is such a shame. I tried all the trains. What do we do now?” She was quite puzzled. Why the heck was he grinning so much while giving me the bad news?

“What about flights to Coimbatore or Bangalore?”

“Coimbatore? We will need to go to Mumbai for that. And yes Bangalore flights are available. But what about getting from Bangalore to Ooty? We will need to go by bus and it may take us 7-8 hours”. I hoped she had not forgotten our bus ride from Ooty to Mysore during our last trip. Well, she had not.

“What do we do now? Perhaps you should go alone and take the train. You have no issues sleeping on newspapers on the floor of the train”

I recalled my many such trips as a bachelor and shuddered. In fact getting to sleep on the newspapers on the floor flanked by shoes and sandals of all makes and sizes and smells was itself luxurious. I cannot even bring myself to think of the other ways I have had to travel. So I did not venture a reply.

We let it go at that and then I came back from office that evening with a bright suggestion. “Let us drive to Ooty.”

Her eyes wide with disbelief “Drive to Ooty? Are you nuts? It is time you logged off from team-bhp permanently for our good.” After a few seconds, “Oh no. Never. You are going to make me fill up a whole book then. There’s no way I am doing that. By the way, how far is Ooty by road?”

“It must be around 1200 km one way, give or take a few kilometers” I said that as if it is just a drive round the corner and as if we have been doing that every other weekend.

“1200 km? That too in a car with no music system? No way”

“O.K. let’s get a music system fitted.” I wanted to scare her at the shop. On hindsight, it would have been better to show how much some of the team-bhpians had spent on their ICE to get that perfect elusive sound setup. It would have saved me a trip to M.G. road.

We go to Poona Motors over the weekend on our bike. I have no idea where the shop is. We finally find the shop and I get an estimate for a simple ICE setup sans any amplifier.

“See, this is going to cost us at least Rs. 25k. We can do the trip for less than half that amount. Why do we need the ICE setup? You have your fantastic Motorola music phone. I will download all the mp3 songs that you want” She obviously did not bother about the last part of my reply. But she like all women immediately understood the economics of spending so much on something as trivial as ICE.

“Alright. Do you think you can drive such a long distance? You have not let me get my driving license”

“O.K. The first thing we do after the trip is to get you your driving license. And you drive the car for our next long trip.” Actually she is quite a good driver. And it is a good idea to get her driving license. On all our trips she always acts as my co-driver and guide giving me a lot of tips and warnings. And she is quite good at that.

Such conversations went on for a few days before finally the red signal turned to amber and finally green.

I had spent several days going over maps for my trip to Indore. Surprisingly I did not spend much time on this trip. I wrote to HVK and he said, doing Pune-Ooty in one day was quite a task and not for the weak-hearted and the slow paced ones. He advised going to Mysore or Bangalore on Day 1 and then to Ooty on Day 2. Amen to that.

That’s when I breached the topic to my colleagues. Most were aghast at such a thought. The typical question was “You hate driving to office which is a 10 km distance and you are planning to drive 2500 km?” Well, who loves driving in our crowded and unruly cities? But then one of my colleagues agreed to join me till Bangalore and then join us back from Bangalore to Pune. He wanted to visit his sister. That solved all my problems. So we finalized our plans.

On the eve of the journey.
I came back from office quite early. I was planning to work from home for the rest of the day. In the evening, I went and washed the car which is a weekly ritual. Filled up the windscreen washer fluid tank. Checked engine oil and coolant levels. Inflated the tyres to 35 psi including the spare tyre. I had also got a gear lock installed a couple of weeks earlier. That was the only thing added to the vehicle after my Pune-Indore trip.

Anyway with no music system visible, there wasn’t any incentive for a thief to break in. Any thief taking a peep would leave thinking “Poor bloke. He cannot even afford a music system. What else can I then expect in the car?”

As usual we did all the packing and kept everything in the car in the night itself. I had to leave enough space for a bag of my friend. Everything was the same as our last trip with the exception of some additional maps. I took the following maps:

• Eicher Road Atlas. HVK hates this map and I myself am not sure if the distances are indeed correct. But the overall directions are correct. I wish it had bigger pages though.
• Eicher Bangalore City map (bought from the roadside raddiwala). Quite a detailed book and I hope quite accurate too.
• IMS maps for Maharashtra and Karnataka
• TTK maps of Mysore and Ooty.

I wanted to put everyone in bed by 8:30 p.m.

Wife “To bed? So early? I cannot sleep so early. You are the one who is going to drive. You can go to bed.”

Son “I will sleep in the car. So you can go to bed.”

We watched TV till 11.00 p.m. and then went to bed.

Day 1 – 20 Feb 2009
Alarm goes off at 2.00 a.m. Wife wakes up and moves to the Kitchen to make sandwiches. I continue sleeping and finally get up at 2:30 a.m. I manage to wake up my son after 15 minutes of wrestling with him. We leave by 3:37 a.m. and reach my friend’s house in Kothrud at 3:53 a.m. He is ready. We go down to the car and perform some puja and then have a cup of tea. We leave at 4:27 a.m. and hit NH4 in 3 minutes. There is nothing to be said about the drive itself. This is quite well described in a lot of threads including the GQ drive thread.

We stop for breakfast at around 8:00 a.m. on the road side. Finish all the sandwiches, some fruit juice and move on. I keep my friend busy asking him to write down the coordinates of every sign board, village, fuel stations and even trees on the way. My wife was quite relieved that there was somebody else to do this dreadful task. I still need to see how HVK does all this by himself.

We stopped at an HP pump which also had a Vithal Kamat’s restaurant. The time was 11:45 a.m. and we had travelled 494.8 km. The car drank 31.29 litres of unleaded petrol, returning an average of 16.21 kmpl. We had an early lunch and the food at Vithal Kamat’s was quite tasty. The place including their washrooms was extremely clean. We were the only customers there at that time.

After driving for around 450 km I had handed over the reins of my car to my friend. I am very reluctant to hand over my car to anyone, but he is one of the people I trust. Abhi (akroy) had advised me to take the Dobbaspet-Doddaballapur-Yelehanka route. But we thought we would avoid the detour and go straight. That was a costly mistake. We continued straight and reached Dasarahalli at 5:00 p.m.

We somehow got onto the NICE road and ended up traveling around 20 km extra and finally reached our destination at Indira Nagar by 7:30 p.m. We showered and gorged on the sumptuous dinner prepared by my friend’s sister.

After resting for a while we went to the Shell outlet on OMR and tanked up the car. We came back to the apartment, half asleep. Walking around the car in the parking, we noticed something sticking out of the rear right tyre. To our horror, it was the spoke of a cycle wheel and around 2 inches of the spoke had gone into the tyre. With a sigh, we got down to the task of removing the tyre and repairing the puncture. The toughest part of the whole ordeal was pulling out the wheel cover. There should be some simpler way of pulling out the wheel cover. The repaired tyre was replaced with the spare tyre. We went to bed around 12.00 midnight.

Day 2 – 21 Feb 2009
We woke up at 4:30 a.m. and moved out of the apartment parking at 5:40 a.m. Again Abhi (akroy) had given me instructions on how to get onto the Mysore road. After asking a couple of people at different junctions we got onto the long flyover on Mysore road by 5:10 a.m.

One strange thing I noticed during this trip. At most of the places where I stopped to ask for directions in Bangalore, people always tried to reply either in Hindi or English, even though I was speaking to them in Kannada. I guess the reason may be that my Kannada has become quite rusty. But my reading skill of Kannada and Tamil was still good, although the speed at which I could read them had reduced quite a bit. But it was a big help at many places. My son would always ask me “what language are you speaking now?” He is quite proud that his dad can speak so many strange tongues. Well, not so many as some team-bhpians are capable of.

We stopped at Kamat’s upchar after Channapatna for breakfast. We stopped there for nearly an hour. The Bangalore-Mysore road is fantastic. I had travelled by bus many times along this road about 15 years back when it was a 2-lane road. I had a black lancer as my pilot vehicle and he was doing good speeds. I followed him since I was driving on the road for the first time. Even here, there are a few big speed breakers which are quite uncommon on Maharashtra roads. We reached Ranganathitu bird sanctuary at 8:49 a.m.

We walked to the ticket counter for the boating. The lady at the counter told me that the common boat requires 10 people and the private boat costs Rs. 250. Right then an Infosys employee from Mysore walked in with his family and we decided to share a private boat for our families.

There were already some people in boats and some waiting to get in. Everybody seemed to have two or three, foot long lenses with them. I was almost afraid to take out my camera attached to a puny 28-105mm lens. I knew it would be difficult to get any good shot. So I had to be content with whatever I got. I wanted to capture at least one bird in flight. But every time I moved to the right side of the boat and kept my camera ready, a bird would come flying low from the left side. I would then move to the left and the birds would fly from the right. Finally I got no shot of birds in flight. But it was a wonderful place that I had missed two years back. We also saw 7-8 crocodiles. Two of them were even having a fight. Has anybody been ever attacked by crocodiles in these waters?

From the Ranganathitu bird sanctuary




We left the place at 9:52 a.m. and started towards Ooty. As advised by Abhi we ignored the outer ring road and drove through the city. The traffic policeman at the ring road signal told me that the ring road is 24 km long and crossing through the city onto Ooty road is only around 8 km long. We stopped at a BP pump to fill up the car and then stopped at Gundulpet for lunch. The next 10-12 km is a torture. The best parts of the road are the shoulders and one can drive on these shoulders.

We were soon inside the Bandipur forest and I slowed down to 40-50 kmph. At the check post there were some volunteers distributing leaflets about how to drive through the forests. Still I saw quite a few people driving very fast and honking. I think it is being extremely insensitive to the real owners of these forests. The forest was looking quite dry.

From the Bandipur/Mudumalai forest (first photo was taken by my wife. Actually she does not get my camera that often.)




I took the Masinagudi route. I did not expect any vehicle coming down that road once the ghat section started and was trying to keep the momentum going, so that I did not have to downshift to 1st. But I did see vehicles coming down and since the visibility at the hairpin bends was not very good, I decided to slow down. At one hairpin bend I encountered a bus coming down. We also saw a trax that had forgotten to take a turn and had crashed into the rocks in front of it. There was a crane trying to pull it out. We finally reached Hotel Lakeview at 2:25 p.m.

Once we had checked in and refreshed ourselves, we decided to go to the botanical garden. I did not take the camcorder, because I remembered that the charges for video camera were around Rs. 450. Once we were at the ticket counter we saw that the camcorder charges had been reduced to Rs. 75 (I hope that is the correct amount)

We strolled around the place for a while. It was again sad to see people littering the place by throwing the disposable cups, plastic bags and newspaper bits etc. When will we learn?

From the botanical garden


We then walked to Charing Cross and walked into a few shops but did not buy any of those exorbitantly priced articles.

For the dinner I had decided to go to Nahar Nilgiris as recommended by many in team-bhp. But then finally we decided to go to Shinkows Chinese restaurant. We stopped an auto rickshaw and asked him (in Tamil of course) how much he would charge me and he told me Rs. 30. As we got into his vehicle, another driver from the auto stand at Charing Cross came and scolded the driver for taking away his fare. So we got into his auto and I told him that I would only pay Rs. 30. He dropped us in front of the restaurant and took only Rs. 25. He told me that the fare from Charing Cross to this place is only Rs. 25 and if he charged me more, it would reflect badly on him when I found out the truth. Wish every auto driver thought that way. The food was quite good.

We returned to lakeview, met up with another of my friend and family who had travelled from Chennai. We were meeting after several years. We talked for a long time and then finally retired to bed at around 11:30 p.m. Thank God, next day we did not have to get up early.

Day 3 – The Wedding Day
We went to St. Mary’s church by 11:00 a.m. and met up with all our friends. Many of us were seeing each other after 17 years. Finished the wedding mass and then moved to The Monarch hotel for the reception. People tell me that Mithun Chakraborty owns that hotel.

Inside St. Mary's church


After the reception most of my friends were going to Kotagiri. So we too drove to Kotagiri, a place where I had spent one year of my life during my school days. Kotagiri is around 6500 feet above MSL and is around 30km from Ooty. It is believed to have the world's second best climate according to some report by National Geography. I showed all the places to my family – the football ground, the basketball court, the apple trees that we used to water. The place brought back a flood of memories. We returned to Ooty by 7:45 p.m.

Day 4 – 23 Feb 2009
We checked out of the hotel and left Ooty by 5:53 a.m. We took the longer route via Gudalur. The road was fantastic and so were the views. Unfortunately we were too early to stop at any of those places. Abhi has put up some photos in his travelogue. I wanted to be at Mudumalai or Bandipur for the morning wildlife safari.

We reached Mudumalai and were told that wildlife safaris were closed for two months. So we moved onto Bandipur. We were told that the sightings had drastically reduced and the Jeep safari that had just returned had no sighting at all. We were just two of us waiting for the bus ride. Again they needed at least 10 people or else we would have to hire the Jeep/Gypsy for Rs. 1650 or so. So we moved on.

We did see peacocks, deer, gaur, wild pig, mongoose etc. on the way. But we missed the elephants. We had missed them in our Malakkapara trip as well.

We stopped at Bandipur Plaza for breakfast. We then decided to drive to Himavad Gopalswamy Betta. Drove up the hill and it was a beautiful place. But the areas surrounding the temple had been burned down and was looking kind of scarred. We then drove to Srirangapatna. We visited some of the monuments there and then continued towards Bangalore. We had our lunch at McDonald’s on the way. We reached Indira Nagar by 5:45 p.m. We tanked up the car at the Shell outlet on OMR.

Himavad Gopalswamy Betta



Tipu's Summer Palace


Gumbaz



Day 5, 24 Feb 2005.
We left Bangalore at 4:40 a.m. and drove through the city and reached Nelamangala toll by 5:37 a.m. When we were nearing Ranebannur we saw the signboards for a blackbuck sanctuary. We decided to visit the place. We went there only to find the place closed. Returned back to the town and crossed paths with a LR Defender going towards Bangalore. I thought “how the heck did Steeroid bring this to India?” Since it had the spare tyre mounted on the bonnet, I had doubts if it was indeed steeroid’s. But I thought I saw someone looking like Steeroid inside and the vehicle also had some foreign registration I think.

We again stopped at Vithal Kamat’s for lunch. Near Satara we stopped for some sugar cane juice along the road. We finally reached home at 6:30 p.m. End of the trip.

A word about hotel lakeview.
The hotel is owned by someone in Kerala and they have another hotel called cocobay at Kumarakom. The hotel is close to the Ooty lake but you cannot see the lake. They have only cottages and many of them have been renovated completely from the inside. There is plenty of space outside to walk around and for kids to play. And the rates are not very high. Overall a good place to stay if you are looking at cottages.

The restaurant at hotel lakeview
Just one word – avoid it. The quality of the food is average. But the service was extremely bad two years back and is worse now. Two years back we had become friendly with a malayali waitress and she always ensured we got prompt service. This time, she was not around and the others were all new. If you have to absolutely eat there, be ready to spend at least 2.5 hours for a simple dinner affair.

Statistics

Pune (Aundh) – Bangalore (Indira Nagar)
Distance: 895.6 km
Travel time: 15 hours 43 minutes
Driving time: 14 hours 11 minutes
Average speed: 63.14 kmph
Toll (including Rs. 50 on NICE Road): Rs. 501.00
Average: 14.33 kmpl

=========

Bangalore-Mysore-Ooty (via Masinagudi)
Distance: 294 km
Travel time: 8 hours 45 minutes
Driving time: 6 hours 10 minutes (not exceeding 40-50 kmph in the forest ranges)

Ooty-Kotagiri-Ooty
Distance: 66.9 km
Travel time: 2 hours

Ooty-Gudalur-Himavad Gopalswamy Betta-Mysore-Bangalore
Distance: 352.7km
Travel Time: 11 hours 52 minutes
Driving time: 8 hours 48 minutes
Average: 15.96 kmpl

=========

Bangalore-Pune
Distance: 891.5 km
Travel time: 16 hours 5 minutes
Driving time: 12 hours 50 minutes
Average speed: 69.47 kmph
Toll paid: Rs. 429.00
Average: 14.96 kmpl

=========

Overall Statistics
Distance travelled: 2510 km
A/C usage: almost 100%
Overall average: 15.09 kmpl

The overall mileage is less than what I normally get. But then we had spent close to 3.5 hours in Bangalore traffic and on NH4 we were driving at speeds of 110 – 140 kmph without being rash at any time. There was not one occasion where we had to apply emergency brakes.

Caution
A lot of patches on NH4 towards the Bangalore side are still not completed. Though the road surfaces are good, there are many diversions and speed breakers. Beware of people driving in the fast lane against your direction on your side of the road. This includes 2 wheelers, tractor-trolleys, trucks, bullock carts etc.

Thank you for your time. I have the detailed travel logs for my trips. I can send it to anyone interested in them.
-Biju

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

So where is the place shown in the first pic?

Nice travelouge.

[dreamdiesel]

Nice Travelogue Biju. Enjoyed every bit of it. The first picture seems to be at Himavad Gopalswamy Betta.

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by dreamdiesel

Nice Travelogue Biju. Enjoyed every bit of it. The first picture seems to be at Himavad Gopalswamy Betta.

Thanks dreamdiesel. You are absolutely right about the place

[phamilyman]

Nice travelogue. Lovely pics.

And awesome time travel on the 5th day as well

[akroy]

Wonderful travelogue and nice pics Biju, Must say it was wonderful talking to you that night.

THere is no Kamat Upachar after Chennapatna. Did you go to Kamat Lokaruchi (which is between Ramanagaram and Chennapatna).

Abhi

[HappyWheels]

Like the way how you went about waiting for the rail tickets to reach WL! Have done the same.

And yes, my wife also concurs with what your better half said to you!

And how do you keep your son engaged during the travel time? What does he do?

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by akroy

Wonderful travelogue and nice pics Biju, Must say it was wonderful talking to you that night.

THere is no Kamat Upachar after Chennapatna. Did you go to Kamat Lokaruchi (which is between Ramanagaram and Chennapatna).

Abhi

I think it was Kamat Upachar. I cannot find the restaurant bill. But the trip meter read 78.1 km. I had reset the trip meter to 0 at Indira Nagar. It was on the left side of the road. The waiters were wearing dhoti and kurta. The restaurant itself was not that big.

It was great talking to you too, except for the bad signal reception that I had in Ooty. I never felt that I was talking to you for the first time. Thank You Abhi.

Originally Posted by HappyWheels

Like the way how you went about waiting for the rail tickets to reach WL! Have done the same.

And yes, my wife also concurs with what your better half said to you!

And how do you keep your son engaged during the travel time? What does he do?

The first long travel that we undertook with our son was when he was 6 months old. A train journey of nearly 36 hours to Kerala. Right from that journey, we never felt we were travelling with a kid on board. He never cries and has no problem sitting in one place for a long time. Once while travelling from Indore to Pune by bus we had to spend the whole night in the ghats and travel the whole of the next day. He sat through the journey without any problems. He was 1 year old at that time.

He generally occupies the back seat and will have some toys and books and crayons with him. He keeps himself occupied with that. He is now 7.5 years old. It is also 4 years now since he started sleeping in his own room as well.

But when he was old enough to use the toilet in the train, we had a nightmarish time, getting him to use it. He was quite frightened with the train shaking quite violently ever so often. Finally somehow I managed to make him use the toilet when the train started moving out of a station. After that no problems at all. We are blessed.

[mobike008]

Nice travelogue. The pictures are awesome. Look forward to this reports continuation and more pictures.

[akroy]

Originally Posted by pjbiju

I think it was Kamat Upachar. I cannot find the restaurant bill. But the trip meter read 78.1 km. I had reset the trip meter to 0 at Indira Nagar. It was on the left side of the road. The waiters were wearing dhoti and kurta. The restaurant itself was not that big.

Ohh probably a new Kamat Upachar might come up now, I am not yet aware of it. In my recent trip to Ooty I passed CPatna in the dark.

Ans yes 78.1km from Indiranagar means Kamat is after CPatna.

Abhi

[pjay_in]

Loved your report and pics. The photos really look good.
Had you taken any pics on way to Kotagiri/at Kotagiri?

[MadRash]

Biju:
It was a good reading. Nice travelog. Keep them coming.

Reg. Car: Any issues like over heating? How was the rear seat comfort?

BTW, do your son wear seatbelt?

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by pjay_in

Loved your report and pics. The photos really look good.
Had you taken any pics on way to Kotagiri/at Kotagiri?

Thank you. I did not take any photos on the way to Kotagiri since I had to get there in a hurry to drop a friend's family who were travelling from there to Coimbatore to catch their train. Many years ago, I had spent one year at Kotagiri. So it was more like taking the family to show the place where I had lived for one year. The drive is fantastic through the forest. Again I could not take the family to Kodanadu view point because of the lack of time.

Originally Posted by MadRash

Biju:
It was a good reading. Nice travelog. Keep them coming.

Reg. Car: Any issues like over heating? How was the rear seat comfort?

BTW, do your son wear seatbelt?

Thank you. There was no issue of overheating although on NH4 we were constantly doing 100-130 kmph. The petrol swift handled it all quite well. Again there were no complaints from my wife and son about the rear seat comfort. The roads were good, so that helped. This was the first time that my wife had to sit at the back for such a long distance - she has a severe back pain problem and so she generally never sits at the back.

Getting my son to wear the seat belt at the back is quite a task - since he would lie down for a while and then play for a while etc. I know that is not safe. But if he sits in the front seat (which I allow only very very rarely and only when we are going a couple of kilometers) he wears the seat belt.

[rjstyles69]

Biju that was one helluva wedding trip man. Very few of us pack our bags and start on such a journey.BTW is that all you got off Gopalaswamy Betta ? Am sure if you had ventured a little more you would have had a wonderful view of the valley.

Anyways this weekend am going there, lets see if lady luck smiles on me.
Once again a very well put travelogue.

Abhi I need to check this new Kamat, might have missed out. Will keep a watch on this one after Chennapattana.

[Nitin]

Adi poli write up, achaayo!
Its a good thing you had your friend along, else driving this much at a stretch would have been quite tiring.
Loved the pic of the peacock!