The Road to Ooty
Part 2 of the “Stories from the saddle” series — notes from the road to Ooty.
The fun clockwise twirl exit ramp from electronics city highway takes you to the NICE road tollgate. 45Rs for the Kanakapura exit. Once you pay that you have 17kms of straight road where traffic congestions seem to exist, but at minimum speeds of 75kmph.
From the elctronics city high way and into the twirl that leads into the NiCE road tollgate. The luxury of having a hydration bag opened up within the first few minutes. Even before reaching Electronics City Road I had taken a few sips of water.
The ride through NICE Road was memorable — fog all around, not the blinding kind, but the kind that embraced the taller buildings. The kind of mist that made you appreciate the otherwise nondescript skyline. A few blink and you miss vistas present on the road kept me enthusiastic, and pointing them to my pillion. There were enough heavy vehicles on the road. Off the road too, two of them seem to have had collisions, or maybe it was a case of the driver falling asleep. They had tumbled off and were lying on the stretch of grass between the two halves of the 4 lane expressway.
The first few hours on the road were spent cautiously conserving energy. Large stretches where I relied purely on the cruise control of the bike. Unlike the previous ride, I didn’t have a target average speed in mind. I was trying to ensure that I was riding at 4500 RPM at all times, which meant proper gear shifts and long stretches on fourth gear.
However I would keep the speed under check. The NICE road is nice, not great. It seems to have been made of concrete. There were no potholes but the surface was not straight, but rather smooth and wavy.
The First Halt
We took our first break after covering 99 kilometres. It was 7:41 a.m. — around one-third of the journey, covered in an hour and a half, an average speed of 66 km/h. Could I have moved at a higher pace? Yes. Would it be enjoyable? Not sure. A few minutes into our break, a petrol pump appeared. It was an IOC pump and xp95 was available, so I put in 200rs worth of petrol while taking a bathroom break.
Protein bars were keeping us company as we stretched and took a few sips of water. My mind was still racing. Anytime we paused I wanted to get back on the saddle. Mentally sometimes this would throw me off balance; the desire to travel slowly, take breaks, let your body recover and the desire to sit on the bike, throttle, look at the console, wind on you body, my partner’s voice in the intercom.
The road ahead of us was largely two-lane, which meant being cautious about vehicles coming the other way. After a long break — 7:41 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. We started again.
The plan was simple: reach the second halt, and the third stop would be Ooty. There was no pressure to keep the pace up. The hotel check-in time was noon, and arriving earlier didn’t make sense.
But the sun had come up, and I was apprehensive about riding in the heat. The last time I did it, on the way to Trivandrum, it had become exhausting quickly.
The road took us through dry forests. The colour was equally brown and green. Not the kind of forest where you would imagine elephants or tigers. But even so the kind of forest you wouldnt want your engine failing on you. We motored on steadily at 4500rpm.
Other than a quick wilderness stop, a pee break where I managed to snack on another protein bar, the next major halt was Hasiru Mane, a roadside hotel a few kilometres past Gundlupete, near the deviation to Sultan Battery.
Hasiru Mane
It was 10:06 a.m. The sun was high. We’d been road-borne for four hours; two more remained.
Hasiru Mane had friendly Tamil-speaking hosts. I drank my first proper tea of the day and ate a masala dosa. The sambar was neither as sweet as Karnataka’s nor as spicy as Tamil Nadu’s, but somewhere in between — much like the geography of the place itself. The waiter tried to sneak a bottle of water into our bill; we didn’t oblige. Twenty rupees saved. Another win for the hydration bag.
We were done by 10:35 a.m. A plentiful half-hour break — I took off my torso armour, stretched, and felt blood rush back into my shoulders. An ache was starting to set in on the upperback. I helped myself with a ample dose of volini spray.
As we got back on the pillion to the satisfaction of a very old and annoyed watchman, I got a glimpse of the world around Hasiru Mane. Dense greenery and hidden behind it agricultural fields. I would come back and look at this via google earth. A few kilometers and the forest would start.
Through Bandipur
Twelve kilometres later we reached the Bandipur checkpost.
There was enough reason to feel apprehensive. Years ago, I’d had a close encounter with an elephant family at Muthanga, the adjoining forest in Kerala. Though that memory was a decade old, the fear lingered.
The second reason for worry was the queue of cars ahead. For a moment, I wondered if we should have started an hour earlier — but the forest officials, noticing we were on a two-wheeler, waved us through the gaps between vehicles. Relief.
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From this moment till we returned to Bengaluru, we’d thank ourselves for choosing to buy a bike over a car. The 2 lane tarred road coiled throught the forest precisely, with speedbreakers placed at regular intervals to keep vagrant like ourselves in check.
This was my third major ride — Bengaluru to Chikmagalur, to Trivandrum, and now to Ooty. One assumption that stood corrected was that I was late to the bike-touring hobby. I had imagined one in every five vehicles would be a bike. It wasn’t.
Most vehicles I saw were cars. Not that there weren’t bikes, but fewer than expected, and even fewer with both rider and pillion in full gear and helmets. Getting used to the trade-offs of bike travel isn’t easy.
Despite the warnings, traffic inside Bandipur flowed smoothly. Boards reminded us: “The deer is not crossing the road; the road is crossing the forest.”
We saw at least fifty spotted deer resting, families of monkeys, langurs, and three elephants on three different occasions.
The second elephant sighting was scary — one crossing the road with a log in its trunk. A man with his family, slowed his car to take a photo; forest guards blared loud noises from their jeep to drive the elephant back.
I slowed down, fingers on the throttle, ready to bolt if it the tusker turned aggressive.
It was ridiculous to see a family man stop in a forest so that he could capture a photo of an elephant. The fact that the car was registered in Kerala added to my annoyance. If you grow up in Kerala you are exposed enough to elephants; in temples, on roads and via stories of the mammothic being violating its domestic conditioning. All that and more should keep a sensible malayali against doing something like that. After waiting for a few seconds, I took the opportune moment that presented itself and sped away from the scene.
Climbing to Ooty
The forest opened into the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Forests don’t have borders, only states do.
Soon the twisties began, and then the hairpins. I was both afraid and excited to take on the first hill ascent after my off-road training. Afraid because of the loaded bike — confident because it was a KTM.
I remembered what I’d learned from my Offroad training experience: commit to the curve, foot on the peg close to the tank, lean without fear. The machine did the rest.
Cars stalled every few bends with coolant issues; we glided past. Almost no other bikes. None fitted with body armour like ours.
One thing that I realised after riding so long is that you tend to become one with the bike as you ride, and I dont mean it in a poetic way; I started breathing and not breathing with the bike. Tricky bends on the road would have me holding my breath; not the best thing to do. In fact something my trainer strictly advised me against doing. 4500 kms into my riding journey this is something that I clearly need to unlearn.
What came next took me by surprise. The coolant-temperature warning on my dash began to blink. I stopped, called a friend for advice, the connection patchy.
For the 10 minutes that I stopped at that corner I was panic stricken. On one side I trusted the engineering of the bike — that was my sole reason for getting this particular bike. But on the way I’d seen enough spots where coolant had exploded and spilt on the road.
When the phone finally connected, he reminded me: Don’t kill the engine; let the fan run — it’ll cool down. I waited, engine idling, heart racing. Within minutes the temperature dropped. We moved again.
On a later conversation with same friend he advised me of changing the coolant to one with a higher temperature tolerance, during the next bike service.
Within a few minutes we arrived. Udhagamandalam aka Ooty the queen of the Nilgiris. Cool, pleasant and dreamlike. Pristine views on all sides. The sky was clearer, the air cooler, the breath easier.
Arrival
Crossing the town, we reached the resort. As expected, there was no grand welcome. A Tamil-speaking lady handed us the keys.
I ordered chai and lunch in the same breath and we settled into the room. There were no openable windows except in the bathroom, but ours was a corner room with two walls of one-way glass, which framed exquisite valley views. From the bed we could see the slopes, tea plantations, clusters of houses, and the mist coming and going.
We sat for a while, watching the light change. Lunch arrived: chicken noodles, fried rice, strong tea. The waiter seemed impatient to take the trays back. I was eager to step out. We decided to take an hours break before getting to sightseeing. The body was tired, but the mind was still eager to move.
This essay is part 2 of an ongoing series chronicling a motorcycle journey from Bengaluru to Ooty — told through the lens of memory, motion, and mind.
You can read part 1 here.
