Here it comes.. A road trip to Agumbe...

Uff... And finally a road trip after 5 years of having a Bullet, and this happened with minimal planning and within just days of initial thought... It all started with me applying for leave without any specific plans in mind, just because they were about to get lapsed.

We had literally 3-4 days to plan the trip, and it started with a pretty elaborate itinerary. Remember, none of the 3 of us have ever been on such trips, and one of them didnt even know the idea of what it would be like.. :)

First cut of the plan - 



Remember, our time constraints were as below - 
- We had Sunday, Monday and Tuesday return
- Sunday, earliest departure time - 10:30 AM
- Worst case- could manage to extend to return Wednesday afternoon

With first review, of this and Wednesday travel almost getting tough, the second version turned out be - 

Version 2 (just the night before leaving)
Bangalore - Sringeri (Day1 halt) - Agumbe (Sight seeing)  (Day 2 halt) - Hornadu - Kudremukh - Bangalore

With this plan, we started to drive on the Bangalore - Hassan highway, a drivers delight. I have driven multiple times in car, and every time, I love this highway, one of the best highways in Karnataka. Our next pit-stop was Hotel Mayura near Bellur Cross. We had good lunch, and was continued towards Chikmagalur. On this stretch, we touched 120 kmph, and our bikes were stress tested. Snack break @ Chikmagalur. Later we headed towards Sringeri, and later my bike making weird sound, and I realized that the silencer bolt had fell off during our ride. It was Sunday, and there weren't any auto-repair shops open. We managed to find one auto-spare shop and he helped us in getting the bolt fitted in a crude manner. Even though, it wasn't perfect, I was confident, we could continue atleast till Sringeri and get it repaired the next day.

We were running behind time (almost 6pm and still 40 kms away from Sringeri). Then change of plan on the spot (course correction). Since Agumbe was our main spot and had few main places to visit, we didnt want to miss that. So we decided to head directly to Agumbe and visit Sringeri on our way back. We immediately called up Kasturi Akka (of Doddamane) in Agumbe, who had space for us. The drive to Sringeri and later to Agumbe at night was just amazing, because it was a day before full-moon day, and the road were litted up with moon light. Our first road trip on bullet, with zero experience of driving in ghats on any two-wheeler and driving @ night in the midst of western ghats forest are with literally just 10-20 meter visibility, a nerve-cracking one. We reached Agumbe by around 8:30pm. Doddamane is a place where Malgudi days was shot, and currently run by Kasturi Akka (that is the name she is known there). She, along with her children and grand kids run a house which is 120 years old, and has all the flavours of a typical pre-independence village setup. They don't have any fixed price; guests generally pay the amount they feel it is worth. 

Doddamane @ Agumbe

Next day (Monday) morning, we went to Kuntadri, to the sunrise point. I am not going to say much about this, just see the pics below - 







We came back to Doddamane, had breakfast and later headed towards the Kudlu falls (around an hr drive from Agumbe). The road weren't good, it was more like a jungle safari, as we had literally to way too interior to watch the falls. Once you reach, you will also have to trek for 1.5 kms to reach the falls. The drive was slightly strenuous on the bike; I must admit. Again the falls was worth every trouble taken. At the middle was forest, the falls was a spectacular view. Pics below - 

Fully tired after playing in the falls, we came back to Doddamane. Incase you don't know, the ghats to Agumbe has 14 hair-pin curves, considered to be one of the tougher ghats in Karnataka. We had lunch, and rested till 5:30 and departed to Sringeri. We also stopped at the sunset point in Agumbe, but that was a disappointment, as the sun was covered by clouds and the sunset wasnt clear.

We reached Sringeri by around 7:30pm; directly headed towards the temple for the darshan. My scientist friend had to come back to Bangalore, and so we dropped him off @ the Sringeri bus stand. 

Me and my friend stayed in Shankar mutt premise. There we pondered on what to do the next day, and we squashed all plans made till then and decided to head towards Hariharapura, where there another Mutt on the banks of Tunga river, and later follow it up with Shimoga to Tumkur to Bangalore. So the final itinerary looked like below - 

Bangalore - Chickmagalur - Sringeri - Agumbe - Sringeri - Hariharapura - Shimoga - Tumkur - Bangalore

Next day (Tuesday), we headed towards Hariharapura after breakfast in Sringeri. We visited the mutt, and Tunga was at her best in this place (infact better than Sringeri). The best part was that there is a hanging bridge over Tunga, and we drove our biked on that. The experience was simply exhilarating. I knew this was the last major thing on our trip, and was thrilling. 

Later on, it was a long drive back home (close to 370 kms from Hariharapura to Bangalore) and we reached around 8:30pm. We drove close to 950kms over 2.5 days, which is pretty high even by car standards. It was pretty strenous, but a worth one... :)