Day 3: Has­san to Madikeri

A day filled with scenic routes but a lot of climbs and pretty tir­ing too in the end. It turned out to be a long day for me. The best part was early on when we had the Gorur dam stretch opened up for us to cycle on — around 3–4 kms on the dam itself. The ascent to Madik­eri was a tough, tir­ing and long climb to end the day and after that we had another descent of nearly 5 kms to the home­s­tay off Madik­eri – made worse by the really really bad roads. We were glad that we had some Coorg food wait­ing for us!


Day 4: Madik­eri to Irppu

It’s not about the bike, says Lance Arm­strong. But to a great extent, a bike in good order does really help mat­ters! Nearly all of us had our share of bike trou­ble (except a few lucky ones!) on Day 4 and I was amongst the unlucky lot!

I started off on Day 4 with good pace and momen­tum (it was down­hill :-). This really helps me dur­ing my long rides. But unfor­tu­nately, hardly 15 kms down the road and I had prob­lems and help came an hour later by which time I had lost a lot of ground already. After that it was a fight to catch up with the rest of the gang, which had already gone far ahead.

After Tala­cau­very, the roads were extremely bad and made sure that my progress was rather slow. At one point, my front brake stopped work­ing com­pletely. By this time (it was early after­noon and we had been served lunch on the road by one of our sup­port vehi­cles) we were quite tired and when a friendly estate owner invited us home for cof­fee, we decided to accept. We didn’t really get cof­fee (his cook had gone off, what luck!) but he did offer us some refresh­ing coconut water from his farm. We also lost close to 45 min­utes on this break!

It was tough going after this – quite a few folks tried to fix my brake but with not much luck. Finally Sameer did man­age to get it work­ing till we reached the third sup­port sta­tion. After reach­ing Vira­jpet, the bike seemed to be recov­er­ing and the roads were get­ting smoother, but time was run­ning out! Try­ing to com­plete the day’s quota (140 kms on next to non exis­tent roads) became an impos­si­ble task.

From near sup­port sta­tion 4, we were picked up uncer­e­mo­ni­ously by the truck and deposited at our home­s­tay in Irppu.

Day 5: Irppu

Day 5 was assigned for rest — and I did noth­ing but. My inten­tion was clear. To rest my now aching mus­cles and also to get some much needed sleep. While the oth­ers wan­dered around to Irppu Falls, I much pre­ferred the com­fort of my bed! Fol­lowed by a nice mas­sage in the after­noon, I felt much bet­ter by the evening.

Day 6: Irppu to Sul­tan Bath­ery

Day 6 was much bet­ter – the roads were bad and while the road­ies suf­fered a bit in these stretches, I had a nice time on my hybrid, mak­ing full use of its good sus­pen­sion, espe­cially on pot­holes and rough stretches. The road became much smoother after we crossed the Karnataka-Kerala bor­der and by early noon, most of the road bik­ers raced ahead!

I still man­aged a nice pace through some really scenic patches of Wayanad’s for­est area and reached our hotel in Sul­tan Bath­ery in quite good time. In fact, that whole day, we kept trav­el­ling faster than the sup­port sta­tions could be set up – as a result a lot of rid­ers didn’t really get lunch till the last sup­port stop in the for­est. And some only after they reached the hotel.

Day 7: Sul­tan Bath­ery to Ooty

A tough day – every­one had been gear­ing up for it. I had tired myself on Day 6 and could feel it as my mus­cles didn’t really feel refreshed in the morn­ing. The first half of the day was okay and I kept going at a rea­son­ably fair pace till we reached Gudalur where the treach­er­ous climb started. A few kms up the slope and I could feel the strain already and I was already on 1–1! My knees and legs just wouldn’t coop­er­ate. A few kms up the slope and hus­band sur­prised me by join­ing in to give me com­pany (he had been whiling some time away at the nearby Jun­gle Retreat in Masi­nagudi). Even he was won­der­ing why I was going so slow!

I kept pace with dif­fer­ent rid­ers for dif­fer­ent parts but most of them left me behind since I was get­ting slower and slower! After sup­port sta­tion 2, which was in a lovely stretch of euca­lyp­tus for­est, hus­band too turned back (he had lunch wait­ing at his resort, was his excuse!) and then I was on my own. Lunch at sup­port sta­tion 3 was most wel­come and I was told that there wasn’t much more climb­ing left. Of course, in the hills, don’t believe any­one who says this! There is noth­ing else you do in the hills except CLIMB!

Anand and Pratvii gave me com­pany for a large part of the 50+ kms stretch upto around 65 kms or so – which was prob­a­bly the tough­est bit of the climb – it was up all the way and I had to take a break after nearly every kilo­me­ter now.

Any­way, Anand who tried to pace me also lost his patience when he saw good roads where he could race home! I decided to just take it one km at a time. After about 70 odd kms, I was quite happy to see our Tour Direc­tor Vasu’s famil­iar face at the last sup­port sta­tion (pack­ing up!).

Home couldn’t be too far away – but with my slow ped­al­ing, it took me another 40 min­utes or so to get to Ooty and then to find the resort (it had turned dark by now!). Thank­fully, a cou­ple of rid­ers had come out by car to buy stuff and turned on the head­lights for me so I could find my way to the resort (which was located in a part of town, I could never have found on my own!!).

So there it was – the com­ple­tion of the Ooty climb – per­son­ally my most chal­leng­ing out of all the TFN days. But we were all “Oota­ca­munders” now!

Day 8: Ooty to Bandipur


The last day of TFN – Day 8 – we had a late start since every­one was still recov­er­ing from the pre­vi­ous day’s climb. At around 9 am we started from our resort. A few rid­ers had start­ing prob­lems already – flats, fallen ped­als etc. By the time, I got to the descent point, it was around 10 am already. From there, it was just down­hill. Just about a few hair­pin bends down, my rear brake shoe got over­heated and burnt out!

It was a really awe­some day – bril­liant blue skies and I slowly made my way down the slopes – some of them really steep! By around 11 am I was down after the last slope where hus­band was wait­ing for me patiently! I ped­aled till the first sup­port stop from there and then after say­ing good­bye to the folks there, packed up my cycle and went off for a short, but well deserved day’s rest and relax­ation at the Jun­gle Retreat!

(PS: Please for­give errors in post that may have crept up in a hurry and a lim­ited Inter­net con­nec­tion! Done dur­ing my hol­i­days. A spell check and gram­mar check will be applied once I’m back!)

More pic­tures from TFN:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anita/sets/72157622893897641/