14th January 2010, 02:10
| #1 |
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Hyderabad
Posts: 77
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| Karnataka - One state many worlds! Truly - it's a lovely state that's got everything going from beaches to mighty ghats to places of historical/monumental interests. Man, I envy Bangalore folks - you're spoilt for choices every weekend. Here's yet another example of how T-Bhp changes life!! Let me spare you the details and give you the gist: Here I was, happily driving an Alto Lx, purely suburb/city commuter, thinking of an upgrade 6 months back. I was looking for a 2nd hand bargain sedan, not willing to look beyond mid size sedans - I used to wonder how people manoeuver the Skodas and Accords of the world in city traffic. However one thing remains constant: Love for automobiles and passion for driving. Then comes T-Bhp and overnight I start dreaming about Elantra CRDi!! Landed a good bargain on a 2005, 47.5Kms Top end model and transitioned from an A+ to a D segment car, again overnight!! Life Change 1: everything from driving experience to image to even self esteem goes up!! Wow! One thing keeps bothering - inability to rip this beauty to what it can deliver. Then comes the travelogue sections of stories and people that traverse the country like their backyard. Life Change 2: Planned a road trip during the year end holiday period and again Wow! what an experience. Let me get to the trip details: I ain't exactly a stranger to long drives and road trips. Did Hyd-Chennai once in my Alto and a roadtrip of Karnataka in a rented Santro (Places along Mangalore - Udipi - Murdeshwar - Jog - Sringeri - Mangalore) in the past. Being in Hyd, taking off from Bangalore seemed the obvious choice - wife's sis and family staying in Bangalore seals the deal. They had already planned a trip to Chikmagalur for 3 days, so it had to be CKM. Further I planned to go to Kudremukh for another 3 days - looked the obvious choice given their proximity. So the plan was to leave Hyd on 24th Dec, 25th morning to CKM, 3 days in CKM till 27th and 3 days in Kudremukh till 30th and back to Bangalore through Belur and Halibeid. Finally drive back to Hyd on 2nd after resting a day at Bangalore. But it was not be - I'll tell you why as we move forward. Co-brother had booked Texwoods in CKM - great place, but bad choice for us. I scanned T-Bhp and booked Upasana for Kudremukh - also took out the directions, road conditions, places to visit etc., from T-Bhp. My son is 18 months old and used to (it's become used to after the trip!) have a really low tolerence level to drives in the car. So I'd planned to send my wife and son by air to Bangalore while I planned to drive down on 24th. So far, so good. 1 Big mistake: Didn't get my car serviced before the trip. I know this is like a constitutional violation, but on the weekend before the trip, we had a choice between wife's parlour visit and car service. No prizes for guessing who won  I know, this is still not an excuse, but hey, when the car runs silky smooth you tend to get complacent. Here are some teasers to begin with The ride  The riders  The stay (my SIL and co-brother)  The roads   The scenes       |
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14th January 2010, 09:06
| #2 | ||
| Senior - BHPian  | Good teaser pics. waiting for rest of the travelogue to uncover. Quote:
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So where did u end up staying ? | ||
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14th January 2010, 09:31
| #3 |
| Senior - BHPian  | KESriram: Waiting for the pictures and the detailed report.  |
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14th January 2010, 12:50
| #4 |
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Lucknow
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14th January 2010, 14:08
| #5 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 631
Thanked: 1,660 Times
| Congratulations on making it into the "long distance drivers" club . Awaiting more details.BTW, I don't think that not servicing a car before a trip is a constitutional violation! I for one never service my car before a long trip, because there's always a chance of the mechanic "leaving the scissors in the stomach", as they say. Last edited by PearlJam : 14th January 2010 at 14:11. |
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14th January 2010, 14:51
| #6 |
| Senior - BHPian  | Hi KES, nice teasers you have put up here. Looking forward to the rest of the travelogue |
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15th January 2010, 18:47
| #7 |
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Hyderabad
Posts: 77
Thanked: 2 Times
| Leg 1: HYD - BLR - CKM We had planned to leave on 24th - my wife and kid by air in the evening, and I had planned to start driving post lunch. However, KCR had other plans for us - while returning home on 23rd evening, I saw the petrol pumps buzzing with activity - in Hyd, it can mean only one thing - yet another Bandh! Not to take any chances, I tanked up at Shell (OT: Always at Shell though its a good Rs.4/- above normal Diesel. Essar has opened shop in Gachibowli and is priced on par with PSUs - planning to switch loyalty). Reached home and the news channels were showing emotionally charged KCR and others calling for 48hr bandh in Telengana districts . Woke my wife up and decided to leave by car at the earliest. I was excited and wanted to drive post dinner, but knew fatigue would catch up with excitement, so decided to get a quick 40 winks and left at 4am on 24th. Hyderbad - Bangalore: Much has already been said about this route, so I'll just reinforce. The route till Kurnool is 4 laned and a breeze - Elantra was cruising comfortably at 120kmph and we reached Kurnool by day break. Roads from Kurnool till Gooty is bad - it still runs through old 2 lane roads, riddles with potholes and is a pain. Road from Gooty/Penukonda to Anantpur is decent - it runs alongside the 4 laning work, you can comfortably do speeds upto 100kmph, but can never take any stretch for granted as single-way. Once you cross over to Karnataka, you have proper 4 laning and can again do 120kmph-140kmph, but gotto watch out for the speed breakers. You must actually slow down everytime you see a decent sized town as you'll encounter a speed breaker. Worst part is in some cases, the speed breakers are on either sides of the median gap! Finally reached Bangalore by 4pm. Some shots on the way Watch out for these monsters!  Off road farming   Papaya farm  Bangalore - CKM: Planned to leave early by 7am on 25th, but managed to do so only by 8am. Took the Sarjapura ORR - Tumkur Road - Neelamangala road out of Bangalore and was caught in the endless traffic of trucks and wkend travellers for 2hrs. Looked like every 2nd person in Bangalore was heading out that wkend!! Yelahanka rail cross and the entire stretch on Tumkur road from Yelahanka had bumper to bumper traffic. Finally left Neelamangala at 10am and reached Kamat CR Patna at 1pm for Lunch. Roads work is in progress upto Hasan but the tarmac is reasonably tarred and you can do 100kmph. But being XMas weekend, traffic was heavy and restricted the speed. Mad rush at Kamat too and it took us 1.5hrs to have thali and leave! Road before CRPatna  Roads till Hasan and beyond till Belur were good too. Belur - CKM is Ok road and the last 2kms before CKM has no road. Otherwise, reasonable road conditions and we were in CKM town after stopping for few snaps at the sunflower farm at 5pm. One thing that stuck us on the way to CKM was the lack of any ghat section. That's when we realized that CKM is not a hill station, but a regular town surrounded by hills and coffee plantations. Nice sunflower farm just before CKM  At CKM, we came across a junction where they were boards to various places we wanted to visit like Kemmangudi, Hebbe Falls etc., all within range of 60kms. (BTW, these yellow boards are all pervasive in Karnataka and are of immense value - I follow them blindly and visit places that are in range, even if I haven't heard of them before. They always turn out to be great). However, our resort Texwood was 30kms in another direction - inside Muthodi Forest reseve. We set off towards Muthodi - roads were good - narrow and curvy, but well tarred - was a pleasure driving on these roads. At Muthodi checkpost, the Texwood vehicle, a Scorpio was waiting for us. Typical arrangement is for guests to park at the Forest reserve parking and take the Scorpio up to the resort. However, we had too many baggages and the Texwood driver too encouraged us to continue in the car saying Indicas and Lancers have made it up. So we chugged along and it was Ok for the first few kms into the reserve roads. Then came the ascent into a non-existant road that continued for 4kms! Took us 30 mins for this stretch alone! Finally reached Texwood around 7pm and had a nice rest by the campfire before retiring for the day. Here are some snaps of the stay and the way to get there. I flicked the first photo from Samurai (Hope it's Ok!). For some more info on how the roads here are, pl visit Samurai's OTR thread https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/4x4-e...-otr-meet.html (Muthodi Forest Drive: The post-OTR meet that became part-OTR meet). Ofcourse, December is no monsoon so roads were not THAT bad, but same roads nevertheless!! The resort nested inside Muthodi (Samurai's snap)  Resort snaps   How to reach there    Elantra - a performance sedan? One super pleasant surprise was the way Elantra handled these roads - with a GC that kisses the ground at every single opportunity, this car ripped apart those offroads with so much grace. I'll dedicate a post at the end of the travelogue to only talk about the car And I almost forgot - my only other driving companion for this trip  |
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15th January 2010, 19:41
| #8 |
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Hyderabad
Posts: 77
Thanked: 2 Times
| Leg 2: Kemmangudi, and other areas around CKM We woke up leisurely on 26th and explored the resort - they offer a coffee plantation visit and you can also chose to drive into the Muthodi forest resort. But we understood that you might not spot anything beyond a deer here or a buffalo there as it's a thick forest safari, so decided to give it a miss and head for the regular attractions - Kemmangudi, Hebbe falls etc., There were some jeeps lined up for a day's visit to those places and were ready to leave by 9:30am. We were not prepared by then and decided to take the car. Took another 30mins to descend down and another 45 mins to drive upto CKM. Had lunch and could leave only by 2pm. We had 4hrs before the sunsets and understood we won't be able to cover all the places in that time. Understood that Hebbe falls is the best and decided to drive all the way up first and then explore other places, if time permits. However, the roads were in a least bit mood to cooperate. They went on from Ok to bad to worse to Oh my god to What the @#$!. We seemed to drive on and on but the distance to Kemmangudi remained constant. Some scenes enroute Kemmangudi    There was a cross road on the way with signs only for one road - which said Manikyadhara and Baba Budangiri. Thought it was the same way to Hebbe falls and found out it was not at Manikyadhara! Having come there, spent sometime at Manikyadhara - there was an excuse of a waterfalls there - saw it and retraced back in the quest for Kemmangudi. See the white strands on the rock behind - that's Manikyadhara waterfall for you - however I read in this forum that it has some medicinal values and you can see a host of people bathing there  By then, it was already 4:30 and we were losing hope of reaching Kemangudi and Hebbe falls. Found this spot on the way and decided to spend sometime there and return. Not a bad find actually!   I had my share of fun  while the ladies had their too!  Spent till about sunset there and started the drive down to CKM. It started raining and the drive got exciting While rest of the crowd snoozed, I was quitely enjoying the drive. Reached CKM around 7 and then another 45 mins to reach Muthodi. I had enough of the 4kms OTR to Texwood and wanted to park the car at Muthodi forest reserve parking, but the Texwood guy told me that the reserve closes at 6pm. But why parking as well I wondered - well fact is the rangers start having their share of 'fun' after sunset, so it's best to leave them alone after dark!!Finally reached the resort by 9pm - thankfully it hadn't rained in this part, so the roads were dry. Was wondering what would have happened if it had rained. Well, I didnt have to wait long. It rained heavily that night and we had to take the slushy OTR track the next morning! This is why Texwood was a mistake - We spent almost 6hrs in the car trying to reach our destination and spent 1hr at a roadside destination. At the end of the drive, ladies were revolting saying enough of drive and ghats - understandably so. Had we stayed at CKM or on the way between CKM and Kemmangudi, we could have saved a good 3hr drive and visited various places without feeling worn out. So go to Texwood if you want to enjoy being in the middle of nowhere and just trek up Muthodi hills. Don't go there if you want to roam around various destination in CKM. |
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15th January 2010, 23:58
| #9 |
| Senior - BHPian | You could have tried the shorter route from Muthodi to Kemmangundi via Kopprikhan estate. This would have avoided going into Chikmagalur. I'm not sure of the road conditions after the monsoons though. It was a very narrow stretch and would have given you a fair share of thrills . I think Samurai had posted about this road in his travelogue. I'm surprised that the resort guys failed to mention this route. Last edited by addyhemmige : 15th January 2010 at 23:59. |
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16th January 2010, 13:08
| #10 |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Hyderabad
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18th January 2010, 23:30
| #11 |
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Hyderabad
Posts: 77
Thanked: 2 Times
| Leg 3: Around Muthodi, Badra Dam and River sites It's been 3 days since we set off from Hyd and we hadn't see any 'Patel' places as yet!! We had also spent a considerable time of our waking hours driving, so we decided to take day 4, 27th Dec on a leisurely note, lazing around the resort, taking a dip in the pool and visiting the plantations. But you never plan a roadtrip, do you? While chatting with other guests at the resort over breakfast, we came across a gentleman, who was a local and he suggested that we should have stationed ourself at Tarikere had we wanted to visit Kemmangudi etc. as the approach roads are better and we'd also have options of visiting Badra wildlife sanctuary and dam. See map below (flicked from Laluk's Travelogue - Thanks boss!). The one highlighted in green by laluks was what he took and we intended to take - but if you look at Tarikere, you'll realize that it's a much better base camp to visit these places apart from the Badra sanctuary and dam.  He also went on to say that it's not too late and we can still the Badra dam at a place called Lakholi within a day's drive - said we don't have to go through CKM and that we can drive through Muthodi ranges and reach Lakholi in 'no time'!! He also said that he's heading in the same direction and that he'll lead us! That recharged our batteries and we set off early in the hope of seeing something worthwhile. Meanwhile it had rained the previous day and there was a blanket of mist over the resort.  We set off downhill and were stopped within 200meters as the Tavera that had gone ahead of us was stuck. Due to rain there was slush everywhere and there was one difficult spot which had slush with uphill terrain and no stones to support traction. Tavera, being RWD couldn't clear it - it went straight for a few meters before sliding sideways  - man, that was scary! Then came those Mahindra 4X4's that nudged ahead of the Tavera and towed it out of the slippery zone. Swift too got stuck and had to be towed while the mighty Elantra just zipped past  Think the TCS pulled it through though I was too tensed up to notice the TCS indicator blink on the instrument panel. As you can see below, just around the curve was the slushy incline where the Tavera and Swift were caught and our good old neighbourhood Mahindra Jeep towed them to safety!  Phew, so much for uncalled OTR adventure! Net net, we got delayed by a good 1hr and it was noon by the time we left Muthodi reserve. We then started to drive across Muthodi reserve towards Balehonnur. Man, this was probably the most scenic route we took on this trip.       Roads were bad though and it took us almost an hour to clear this 30km stretch and reach Balehannur (this road meets the Balehannur route at SSPeta). Our friend told us that we'll have to drive 'few' more kms before we can reach the dam and we continued to follow him on the route to Shimoga through NRPuram. We then drove on for another 40kms before we stopped for lunch at NRPuram (Hotel Kamyakumari, a new hotel on the outskirts next to Essar petrol bunk) and our friend rode on saying we're almost at Lakholi dam. We found that we're still 45kms from the dam - so in all, the stone's throw distance was later found to be almost 120kms long. And in the ghats of Karnataka, 120kms would mean atleast 240minutes or 4hrs of drive - long day again. Finally reached Lakholi dam over Badra around 5pm and it was a great sight! Funnily, the guard on the dam said we need a permission letter from some irrigation officer's to enter the dam - and ofcourse the Indian way was to substitute the letter with Rs.50 currency! Wonder why these procedures when everyone knows the way out - they can instead have a proper ticketing system and use the revenue for dam maintenance. Anyways, spent about an hour in this lovely place. There's the River Tern Lodge next to the dam and it looked a great place to stay, didn't venture out there though.     It was dusk as we left the dam and I found that the headlights were not working - thankfully, high beam worked and we decided to head to the nearest city to spend the night, though our baggage was still checked in Texwood. Shimoga is about 20kms and we spent the night there in a hotel at City center, above Kamat hotel. Don't remember the name, but it was good VFM. Shimoga's a nice small and beautiful city; sorry no pics. Left Shimoga early next morning (28th Dec) at 7am and decided to do a proper road trip back to CKM - we saw many interesting places the day and couldn't stop, so decided to make the best of it today. This was our first step - a beautiful roadside stream between NRPura and Balehunnur.      Right after the Badra river crossing in Balehunnur, you come across this beautiful roadside cafe called 'Badra Cafe'. It's maintained by the MRF group that also has large plantations and a home stay in that area. You get very good Tamil tiffins here like Paniyaram, Steam dosa etc., that you typically don't find anywhere else. Coffee lovers must stop here - apart from brewing great coffee, they sell them too. Packed about 2kilos of coffee and started towards CKM.  The plantation beside the cafe  Another 10kms and we saw a board that said Bhadra River Camp (Home (Bhadra River Camp)). Took the turn and went through these roads (again TCS in action!) and got to a forest area. This camp is a JV between some private concern and forest dept. They have good tents at 1500/person/night. At the camp you can swim, fish, raft, click or do nothing at all. Great place and I regret not having spent a night there. The folks manning the camp were very hospitable and also got us home cooked food. I would strongly recommend this place for a weekend stay. The road to the forest  The surrounding forest  The camp  The river   Boating  Finally, reached CKM by 4:30pm. I had called Texwood and request them to pack my stuff and send it down to the parking area. Bless them, they did! It was such a great relief to know that you don't have to trek up the slippery route on a dark and rainy evening! Not even a soiled socks was missing from the room and they had it all packed and delivered. We were delayed by more than an hour as I had to take my Elantra to get the lights repaired, but Texwood staff waited to deliver our stuff to us! One thing that you might find in all the reviews here - all the homestay and resort staff are extremely hospitable and friendly. And yes, if you're a Tam, you might be pleasantly surprised that almost everyone in the CKM belt speaks Tamil. Lotsa of migrant population from TN settled here to work in the Coffee plantations. We collected our baggage and finally returned to CKM around 7:30pm. Found an Ok accomodation in Hotel Soundarya palace and spent the night there. Finally, felt like a road trip!! And this how the Elantra looked after all the OTR and ghat experiences!  |
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19th January 2010, 12:06
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| Senior - BHPian | Nice pics and detailed travelogue Sriram. Some correction in the places name Quote:
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Muthodi - Kemmanngundi - Lingadahalli-Tarikere-Lakkavalli, this route should have reduced your distance by 60% atleast. But the road condition is not so good between Muthodi & Kemmanngundi. You should have visited River Tern jungle lodges, it's an excellent place to be in for a day. Last edited by sushrutha : 19th January 2010 at 12:08. | ||||
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21st January 2010, 18:45
| #13 |
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21st January 2010, 19:24
| #14 | |||||||||
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Hyderabad
Posts: 77
Thanked: 2 Times
| Sorry folks - I've just been too lazy to respond and update this thread. Got one more final leg to post before I sign off! Quote:
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Thankfully, it did after a few try's and I was around CKM so could take it back to them next day and get it fixed. Scary experience it was!Quote:
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23rd January 2010, 02:00
| #15 |
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