EMPERORS' RIDE AROUND THE ROCKS - RIDE THROUGH THE DECCAN
Travelling is my passion and being a biker is always additive that helps me to reach far and unseen places. The same way was this ride to the places where my friends or people known to me have not been to. The planning for this ride took us quite a long time almost 10 weeks+, as I suggested to my fellow bikers about these places which I had seen some time back on the net. Some think going on bike ride is easy and it is just hopping on the bike and throttling. Lot of work and time goes into planning rides and equally more in its execution.
This ride was planned to cover belum caves (underground caves) and gandikota aka great canayon of india, and finally the plan was formulated to cover horseley hills, lepakshi , yahanti caves & temple , belum caves and gandikota. We decided to take only people with previous experience in CTC with bike rides as this was a trip to explore new destinations. What we all know about this place and common to all of them is these places are abodes of rocks !! we expected a ride though rough roads and barren lands as all we had heard about andra Pradesh is it is a hot land . but end of the ride we were totally surprised to find good roads 70% throughout our rides and nice looking lush green agricultural lands upto the end of the horizon.
The team considered of fantastic (funtastic) five. Myself , Ram PS ( enagal kamalhassan), sabanayagam ( our DON) , manohar rajasekaran (cool fellaw) and SELFIE – bharatyee.
We had amazing ride through various levels of dipping roads and long straight roads. Road along the dusty village roads with paddy fields, cotton cultivation, chilly cultivation and the special road on both sides with sunflowers in full bloom. The ride started on Friday (28/11) at 9 pm and finished the ride on Monday midnight. All through the ride we slept outdoors , a petrol bunk was our home on day Friday night , an abandoned small shelter on NH44 on Saturday night and a panchayat office veranda with its special mosquito army on Sunday night. Thanks to saba and mano for getting odomos or else we wud have fought a never ending war with the mosquitoes till morning until they call it a day.
All through the ride the exiting part was food . we had breakfasts under 150 rs on all days for all the 5 of us . food was really good and a point to appreciate in these small shops is that they never used plastic cups or plastc papers in serving foods which we generally see in the those kind od shops in tamilnadu. One thing which worried (selfie) bharatyee was the spiciness of the foods.
Day 1 – we covered horseley hills – which is a small hill station and it is named Andhra ooty. We spent few hours taking pics and relaxing over the rocky cliff of the hill. And then by noon we started to lepakshi and reached there by 4 pm. Lepakshi is known for its ancient temples built by the vijayangara kings.
Day 2 – we rode from our camp site on NH44 to yehanti via gooty. While riding near gooty we got to see a huge fort in gooty hills and we stopped to take few pics and decided not to visit it this time as we may fall short of time. Then we proceeded towards yahanti caves and temples and after finishing from yahanti caves we left to belum caves. Belum caves are caves formed underground and we had to go down the steps and explored those caves for almost two hours. We we mesmerized to see the various formations and the wat the rocks were down there. Saba and ram flung into action to capture as much they can with their cams. After that we rode 50+ km and rested our machines.
Day 3 – we started early morning and went to gandikota . gandikota is a mesmerizing place , it has a fort built around the whoel place by the side of a gorge and the gorge resembles the great canayon found in US. It took us 6 hours to explore roam around take pics and yet we were able to cover only 30-35% of the whole place. Then after a good lunch at jamalmadugu (nearby town) we started our ride back towards Chennai and we reached Chennai by 12 midnight.
Three days all through the ride we had a great time with Loads of pics and fun & especially to mention the numerous selfies by bhrathyee, but still we made sure all of us rode safe and enjoyed the ride as one team. Shoud thank saba for coming with us even in his busy schedule and ram & mano for helping me in planning this trip and bringing out just a wish 4 months ago to reality, bharathyee for coming a long way to join us for the ride and taking multiple selfies. ( hope soon he can organize a session – HOW TO TAKE SELFIE !! )
SIGNING OFF – and waiting to ride again !!!
Photo links:
