When the trails called..

The previous week's off-road race had turned my off-road enthusiasm on. A colleague of mine, Prathik indicated his interest to tag along with me for a medium distance ride. The stage was set for a ride through my favorite trail routes to Chikka Thirupathi! Girish was excited to join too. 

The last time I went exploring the route, I had spent hours in front of Google maps satellite view, zooming into the unmarked, unpaved roads, to come up with a route that avoids the tarred roads to the extent possible. I had prepared cue sheet, rough drawings of suspicious junctions, noted down names of the villages. This time, I was smart. I mean my phone was 'smart'. I loaded the map in the phone, and left the whole thing to the GPS gods. 

Picked Girish and Prathik along the way, and headed to Varthur via the beautiful road from Kadubeesanahalli, through which I had done my first cycle ride! We were already into the traffic free green zone. Soon we hit the trails. The initial part of the trails were very familiar to me as I had done the same route twice earlier. With the courage backed by the GPS I started venturing into unknown trails. There were junctions where we left the choice of left or right to the mental flip of a coin. Thats how we reached the ‘grand canyons‘. We rode down till the base and posed for some photographs. I managed to motivate the mtbers to pull of some stunts off a small bump, and meanwhile got motivated myself. While I was busy negotiating the bump, I saw that the bike was dragging me down heavily. It was the flat rear tire! The trail gods don't ever seem to forgive me for opting for a hybrid bike! Is it time to buy a mountain bike to please them? Fifteen minutes target was set to replace the tube, and the mission was accomplished perfectly within time! 

We carried on and caught up with the tarred roads. A number of banyan trees were cut down on the side of the road, a very sad sight to see. Many gated communities were popping up in the neighborhood; the beauty of these village roads would not last long! Again a trail on the left side, and just went for it without much cross checking in GPS. Though being a single track narrow trail, there were many people along the way, and few of them got shocked hearing the cycle bell! Probably they never expected a cycle in that wilderness. Just when we touched back the road again, there was another trail waiting for us. There were always a few dogs to make a fuss, whenever we by mistake stepped into some private enclosures. They made it a point to chase us out of their territory.

It was a pleasant surprise to see a volleyball court (with net) deep inside a trail route! It was like finding an ocean in between the journey to the center of the earth. Next visit will to these trails will be with a volley ball in the bag! There was a vast open space next to that, which probably can be used as a full scale football court. We all were hungry by that time, so decided to take rest and empty our stock! A few bananas and cream buns were all we had. I was so hungry that I did not want to throw away the piece of a banana which fell into the dirt. The journey continued through the fields, and soon we entered the 'elevated trail way'. It was a relatively wider untarred road elevated to a decent height, with some vegetable fields on either side. It was a thrilling experience riding through that. Imagine cruising at 120+ speeds on a motor bike on the elevated toll way to Electronic city and subtract all the pollution, noise, petrol/money wastage, risk of fatal accident from that. No, I don't think it can still be matched.

We reached Mugalur village, and Chikka Tirupathi was 5 kms ahead. It was all highway to Chikka Tirupathi, and there was no fun in the highway ride. Afterall route is more important than destination for we bikers! So we decided to turn back. We had yummy idly and chutney at the road side there and started the journey back through a different route. Instead of going through Sarjapur, we started exploring unknown trails again. However luck was not on our side, many trails met dead end and we had to fall back to tarred roads. However there was a long straight stretch of muddy road, which kept the thrills alive. 

It got a bit tiring, and with the plan of getting back home before lunch time, we dropped the idea of trail exploration. There on the ride got a bit bland, through tarred / semi tarred roads in the hot sun. There was a villager riding the green atlas cycle with his wife sitting behind him, who asked us whether we would be willing to swap bikes with him. I escaped from the scene shouting back at him that there was no carrier in my bike. A strong head wind picked up, and troubled us till we reached Gunjur. Parted with Prathik, and myself and Girish set off to Decathlon. 

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