Mountain biking @ Western ghat of Sakleshpur

This is story of an actual mountain biking where you ride on rocks over the mountain. Harsha (A Bangalore Bikers Club (BBC) member, he belongs to Sakleshpur) organized the whole trip. He posted on BBC about the trip and invited people to join him on the ride, finally total 12 person went on this ride. He arranged a tempo travelers with bike carrier from Tandem Trails.

It was a totally new experience for me to go out on a trip with a group among whom I have not met anyone before. We decided to Start from Bangalore on 24 Sep night. It was raining very heavily that day since evening so our start got delayed by 3 hours. Finally we left Bangalore at 1:00 am. While boarding the bus I met Nishant, Ashish and Ravi. Ther are also from IITK. I already knew Nishat, so the group was not that unfamiliar after all. And after reaching Sakleshpur we all introduced ourselves and then the unfamiliarity went away. We reached at the coffee house (where Harsha had arranged stay for us in Sakleshpur) by 8:00am. It was basically a home which they rent out to tourist as well. We got fresh and had breakfast there. Breakfast was just awesome, I liked akki roti (made of rice floor) and brinjal curry with that.

Then after introduction round and group photo session, we started our ride to the Rotikallu hill. It was up and down all the way, at couple of inclined we even had to walk. On the downhill I even loosed control on a turn but managed to get back the control. On the way there was a water fall. We spent half an hour there and then rode ahead. After 13km we reached to resort kind of place. There we spent more than an hour. I enjoyed jhoola and rope walking over over the canal. Till now it was we had ridden on the road.

Now it was the time to ride off road on mountain trails. There were many (8-10) water streams on the way. And the path was full of rocks. At times we even had to carry our bike. But it was awesome feeling to ride on those trails. We finally reached the peak around 2:30 pm. Then it started raining heavily. That made the return really tough. The trail became very slippery. And breaks were not working. Then we started falling. Everyone fell down at least once. Ananya (The only girl in our group) fell 4 or 5 times on the way. We even got lost in the mountains on the way back, the entire group took the wrong route. Fortunately another local guy Ullas knew the way and he got us on the right trail. Finally we reached at a water fall. We got our lunch there itself. It was amazing to have bath and lunch at the water fall. One thing that I really liked about all the places was, there was no polythene, wrappers or any sort of litter there. From there I got into the jeep which carried our food there as my breaks was not working at all and it was not safe to ride on downhill without break.

After reaching back to the coffee house we had a lot of chit chat among us. Viewed pics that we took on the way, had dinner and that's the story of day 1. On day 2 we got fresh and went on a small ride in to a coffee estates. It was nice bhool bhulaiya kind of way. Then we had breakfast and now it was time for a mountain tracking to Ethi Bhuja hills. We reached to the base of the mountain by 11 am. It was a small temple at the base. We started tracking from here. First 200mtr it was a muddy path after that it was fine all the way but the actual challenge was leeches. They were all the way on the trails. If you stop to remove one from your shoe, 3-4 would get on to it in that time. I got a stick that not only helped me in walking on the rocks but it was more useful to remove leeches from my shoes. Somehow the group managed it to top. I stopped on the peak just before the Ethi Bhuja peak. Stayed there for some time. It was again amazing to see the clouds passing by me. It was a beautiful view of the mountains and clouds passing by them. On our way back we stopped at a water fall and took bath there. All the tiredness got washed by the water of the fall.

Then we reached back to the coffee estates, had lunch there and started our back journey to Bangalore. On the way back we watched two movies "Dabang" and "Arndhati" in the tempo traveler. We reached Bangalore by 11 pm.

In the beginning, it was a group of 12 people who didn't know each other, but now we share a good bond and we would smile laugh about everything we did in the last 48 hours. Harsha and Ullas were two great hosts and made sure that we don't miss any fun. It was one of the most memorable trip for me. We named it "Bindas Biking" but it was much more fun than that. In Ananya' words "We had off-roading like hell, ride through the Coffee Estate which reminded me of the Bhul Bhulaiya of the Harry Potter movie, cycling in the rains, swinging in the river, rope walking, trekking to the peak of the Ethi Bhuja hills, a big losing war with the leeches, sumptuos meals, ride on the roof of the tempo traveler and a whole day of cycling uphill and downhill and a cycle ride again in the morning".

You can see the pics here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=495419&id=532930516&l=6f695e239e