Bike day 2 - 30km

Today we decided to do a shorter ride on our own. The plan was to ride for 2 hrs. We decided to take the same road as last time. Traffic was usual now, not much on the way out, and since we were coming back earlier, not too much on the way back also. Once we entered the city, we decided to take inner road instead of the higway we took last time. This was good. Inner road was nicer, much less traffic and we got few extra miles also.

Bike day 1 - 40km

Today was first long ride on the bike. We had to leave at 5:00am in order to avoid traffic. It was dark, but nice as there was no traffic on road. We met with Kiran on highway and then started to go out of the city towards Benarghatta. After a bit we reached close to Nilgiris. The smell of mountains was over powering, and it felt good to be back near nature. Then we reached a forest road that will take us into real forest, A forest where there are elephants. Kiran was quite excited about elephants and had taken many trips there to spot one. Thankfully we did not spot any, I am still not fan of wild wildlife. Forest road was good, narrow but no traffic. We could ride much faster here, and also try out the hills. The turn around point on top of the hill was interesting. I could not place the semi-dense forest I was seeing anywhere. Usually when we see natural beauty, we are able to relate it to other exotic place we have seen before. This was just different, and I was of course not impressed, being spoiled by beauty of Seattle.

Still, it was cool to be able to get out of the city and breath real fresh air. We stayed there for about 30 min, then started back. The way back was different, it was light and there was lot more traffic than before. Kiran asked me to not get off the road, and keep my ground. I did not know if I could trust that truck driving down at me to brake at right time. Mostly they did, I was driven off the road only couple of times. Still I cannot call it good experience in any way, only the crazies would venture out like that. I don't know how we reached at turnout of apartment safely. To celebrate that we had idli breakfast outside and then took the final easy road back to the apartment.

Getting the bike

As soon as I landed in Bangalore, we did not waste any time and got my bike. I had already decided on Shwinn Sporterra sport, had seen and tried it at Performance bikes in Redmond. The bike guy Kiran put together the bike in front of us, it was interesting to watch. We rode the bikes home through Bangalore traffic at peak time. That was a life threatening experience. Of all the adventures I have been into, cycling in Bangalore is going to turn out to be most life threatening, on occassions I felt, this is it, I am going to be the next road kill. But somehow half walking, half riding we got back to the apartment.

Biking in India

If someone told me a month ago that I will be thinking about doing a multi-day cycling trip, and that too in India, I would have said no way! clearly no way! I am not into biking. But as it happened, I did end up signing for one. After unsuccessful Rainier, this year end was looking glum. I was going to spend my birthday, december and new year in India quietly. Somehow that is not want I wanted to do. But just as I was getting used to the idea of spending quiet time (after a highly adventurous year), I saw Vaibhav's status message talking about biking southern coast of India. hmm, I will be in India! So that is how it started. I seriously started thinking about doing part of the trip with him, it was new, exciting, uncertain, fun! I did not know if I am going to make it more than 1 day, and the logistics seemed huge, but I wanted to try it.