A bike trip to Cof­fee Val­ley, Hosamane

Well, yes. After many unsuc­cess­ful attempts to go on a bike ride, I finally did it. Of course, I still can’t ride one, but I found the sec­ond best thing : rid­ing pil­lion. And I must con­grat­u­late my back and the other more sen­si­tive parts (ahem) for last­ing it out the more than 500 kms we cov­ered to Sak­lesh­pur and back.

Cof­fee Val­ley turned out to be a nice chilled out place tucked in a cof­fee plan­ta­tion in a small town called Hosamane. “Leave the black­berry behind, expe­ri­ence pure mag­i­cal beauty of this cof­fee coun­try and the famed hos­pi­tal­ity of the Hosamane fam­i­ly” it promised. And it was a promise they took seri­ously we were to real­ize, when we stag­gered out after the week­end, a few kilos heav­ier! The hosts are lovely peo­ple and make sure you don’t leave till you feel like stuffed potatoes.

Sit back, relax and drink cof­fee!
Cof­fee Val­ley is a place you can choose to do pretty much noth­ing at all. Just enjoy the weather, the chirp­ing of birds and snakes dart­ing in and out occa­sion­ally in your path. Have large break­fasts, large lunches and large din­ners (the very thought of all the food I con­sumed makes me feel guilty about the diet that I’m not on!). And sleep is another good pass time. And of course, drink­ing copi­ous amounts of… you guessed it… coffee!

Ooh! Aah! Ouch!
And oh! I fell twice. Once, tak­ing down a rather heavy-framed S with me (and his 80+ kgs falling on my tiny frame, ouch!) when try­ing to nego­ti­ate a slip­pery slope. An impor­tant les­son was learnt there (try stay­ing at the front when climb­ing down! :)

But falling is an essen­tial part of my rou­tine. I even fall and trip on the road, when there’s absolutely noth­ing in my path.

On the way back from the trip, over din­ner at Mayura hotel, I was laugh­ing over some­thing and grabbed A’s sleeve enthu­si­as­ti­cally. The result: I swerved on the rather unsta­ble plas­tic chair, which wob­bled vio­lently and then went down. Along with me I gen­er­ously took along the 6-foot long A.

So there we were sprawled on the floor, with S watch­ing us very amused (with no signs of even try­ing to help us up on our feet). We laughed buck­ets at our own embar­rass­ment. Every­one else it seems wasn’t amused. They all looked at us with the curios­ity reserved for lit­tle bugs and unim­por­tant crea­tures and then went back to their more impor­tant task of fill­ing their stomachs.

The power of a nylon rope
The other inter­est­ing devel­op­ment was that A’s bike failed some­where after din­ner. We stopped at a small town and found an even smaller mechanic shop. The mechanic smiled when he saw the Bul­let. I’ve never han­dled any­thing that big, he told A and lit­er­ally ran in the oppo­site direc­tion! So we were back on the road with A going in fits and starts, the bike mak­ing strange burpy noises and emit­ting loud bursts, threat­en­ing to scare all the wildlife (thank­fully we had left them far behind in Sakleshpur).

We did man­age to cross the Nee­la­man­gala junc­tion. Around 10 kms to Ban­ga­lore, A’s bike finally called it a day (or night). On the fate­ful evening, we real­ized that we should never again under­es­ti­mate the power of a nylon rope.

The rope had served us well by help­ing us fix the back­pack to the bike for the jour­ney. It was the same rope that was used to tow A’s bro­ken down bike with S’s still func­tion­ing bike! 2 Bul­lets cough­ing along at 20 kms per hour across North Ban­ga­lore in the mid­dle of the night, tied together with a nylon rope. You can well imag­ine the sight. But stranger things have been known to hap­pen I guess.

Like I said, there’s a first time for everything!

Get­ting There: Cof­fee Val­ley is around 25 kms from Sak­lesh­pur. Take NH 48. After Sak­lesh­pur (250 kilo­me­tres) you need to take a right on the road after 2 kms. After 18 kms, at Han­bal, you need to take another left. Go down the road for 5 kms and you get Cof­fee Val­ley on the right. Look out for the sign!

You can find more details on www.coffeevalley.net
Ph: 080–26565638
Mobile: +91–9242614856

The Hosamane Ride album