A bike ride to Yelagiri-Need for Speed

Date- 13 Dec, 2008
Total distance-350 kms(both ways.From silk board to Yelagiri-164 kms)
Path- Silk board(Bangalore)-Hosur-Krishnagiri-Bargur-Thiruppathur-Yelagiri
There is another way- Silk board(Bangalore)-Hosur-Krishnagiri-Bargur-Vaniyambadi-Yelagiri
Note: At Krishnagiri after the Toll fee colletion place, take the service road at the 2nd flyover and then take left to NH46.
Caution: Be careful when you are driving near Krishnagiri town or when you are close to any town or village.Some people will be driving on the wrong side of the road and also will be crossing the road without looking anywhere.

Me and 4 of my fellow roadies(Ajith, Manja, Srihari, Vineeth) decided to make this 1 day trip on 13th, the Saturday. I was riding my good old horse, a 150cc 5 year old Fiero F2. Ajith and Vineeth were on Vineeth's new Apache RTR 160, Srihari on his Zeus and Manja on his Dicover.

Ideal plan:
Our plan was to leave Bangalore at 7 AM and cover the 160 odd kms to Yelagiri and reach there by atleast 11 AM. Then, depending on the availability of water at Jalagamparai falls we woul visit either that or if there was no water we wuold go and visit Swami Malai temple and Pooganoor lake.Leave Yelagiri at around 3 and be back at BAngalore at 7 PM.

Actual execution:

As it always happens, ideal plans doesnt work. We left Bangalore at 8:15 AM owing to some lazy "roadies". All 5 of us had planned to meet at Silk Board junction at 7:15 AM. But, only Vineeth and Ajith reached that place on time and as the rest of us didnt reach there for more than half an hour, they started off slowly as the bike was new and they couldnt rip on the road. When we came to know that later and as we didnt have any constraints on our bike, we rode off like hell to catch up with them. Finally, when we thought that we have missed them altogether and decided to have breakfast at a place called "The Udupi hotel"(Yes...they are everywhere) just after the flyover at Hosur towards Krishnagiri we met them there. They had also just stopped to have breakfast there.
We had idli Sambar there which was OK. But, one difference was, everywhere you get 2 idles and 1 vada in a single plate of "idle-vada". But here it was 3 idlis and 1 vada.
We left Hosur to Krishnagiri at around 9:45 AM. The 3 of us(me, Manja and Srihari) took off on our bikes and reached Krishnagiri at around 10:30 AM. The road is very good and super smooth. I pushed my horse to the limit and touched speeds of 120 kmph at some points.
At around 11, vineeth and Ajith reached Krishnagiri. But Vineeth had a problem. He had to go back to Bangalore as he had some critical work at his office. So he left us and Ajith became my pillion.
From there we reached Bargur and jut after that we took a right towards Tiruppathur. The road to Thiruppathur was very good. There were tamarind trees on both sides of the road and we stopped to eat some of them.
We reached Thiruppathur(which is like a big town and actually faced some traffic jams there) and continued towards Vaniyambadi. This road was pothole ridden. Just after some 15 kms from Thiruppathur( before reaching Vaniyambadi) there was a big board indicating that we should take a right turn to Yelagiri hills. We took that right turn and oh boy!!!that road was a dream come true for any biker. There are 14 hair pin curves and I had so much fun taking them. Then we reached Yelagiri at around 12 AM.
Manja( our official Tamil translator) asked one of the local guys there about the lake. He said there are 2 boat houses and gave us the directions. First we went to one of the boat houses which was a bit far(Sorry..i dont remember the name). When we reached there we found out that it was a total crap. There was nothing to see there. We came back to the place where we first stopped and found out that the other boat house was right there itself.This was Pooganoor lake and it was beautiful. We spent some time there and then decided to have lunch. We went to "Hotel Hills" and took Thali there which tasted good( maybe because we were famished). It was a decent hotel with affordable prices. We left the hotel at 3 PM and decided to go to the Jalagamparai falls as the local guy told us that there was water there.
Initially we wanted to trek to this place from the hills. But as we didnt have time we decided to go by bike itself. For this we had to retrace our steps back to Thiruppathur where we have to take a left. While going down I switched off the engine and it was nice to reach speeds of 60 without any sound from the engine(like some electric car).There is a place called "Telescope point" close to the top where they have kept a telescope and one can get a view through that.Whne I looked through it. I could see some highway and actually read some hotel's name(Hotel Suryadev) which, I dont know, was how many kms far.At the base of the hills, Srihari's bike had a flat tire. Luckily there was a puncture shop close to that place. As the others had gone ahead, we came back to his place and pushed his bike to the shop. But, the puncture was due to some nails and it had damaged the tube. So we had 2 choices. Either go till Thiruppathur(which was 6 kms from that place) or use a second hand tube available at his shop. But as the cost of that 2nd hand tube was high(100 rupees!!! with 2+ patches already on that) Manja and Srihari went to get the tube. Myself and Ajith tried to get some tea from a small shop and I really dont know what happened but he gave us Horlicks instead of tea!!!He even asked us how was the tea to which we had no answer.
After fixing the bike we left that place at 5:15 towards the falls. We took the left turn at Thiruppathur( there is a small borad indicating this).The road here is narrow and goes through many villages and at some places confusing.After 12 kms we reached the falls.Indeed there was some water and I decided to stand under the waterfalland take a shower. The water was cold and I ahve to tell you, it is a great experience to get your head pounded by a waterfall!! we took some snaps there and as it was getting dark we left the falls at 6:30. On the way we had coffee at Krishnagiri and reached Bangalore at around 10 PM.