Bangalore - Ooty Trip [Day 2]

 I know you must be wondering the above is taken from Pulsur website and i will say NO, do you know why because its me and Manish in the above pic which was beautifully taken by Stanly. Oh i think i am getting off the track let me get back. With lot of enthu and having a terrible night fighting with bed bugs, which didn’t let me sleep but I manage to take some rest and we started from Mysore early morning after a cup of tea towards Mysore -Ooty road. On the way we took breakfast on a highway dhaba and proceeded to Gundlupet. The road was good and is a one-way state highway. It is possible to go at high speeds in these roads, but special care needs to be taken while overtaking and reaching small towns (humps without warning can shake your vehicle!).

Continuing from Begur road (NH 67) we reached Gundlupet town, the road straight goes to Ooty and the road right goes to Bangalore-Calicut Highway. From this point till you reach Bandipur Forest range the road is very bad. Big path holes at every inch of the road forced me to drive slowly, otherwise could have damaged my bike and the main fear was how I am going to manage if my bike gets puncher. After struggling for almost and hour we reached the entry point of Bandipur Forest. After driving a small Ghat section with hair-pin bends the jungle started to appear. Seen some Warning sign boards of "Animals may cross, go slow at 30 km etc.” Driving through the jungle was a pleasure , the road condition was good. We reached Mudumalai wild life Sanctuary check post and proceeded further. Just after that we saw bunch of deer toward the right side of the road. We stopped and started clicking their photos.

The forest looked little dense from here and greeted with warning sign boards "Critical Elephant Zone , go slow" . We could locate some monkeys and two tuskers gracing at a distance. After about 5 min we say the vehicle coming from opposite direction started warning us to go slow and an Elephant with a baby elephant is on the road and driving fast of near the baby elephant may angry the mamma elephant. So we started driving slowing and we saw mamma elephant along with baby elephant have crossed the road and not they are busy eating on the other side of the road. Three of us continued moving and two of us stopped by the road along with me. We parked the bike on road side and slowly started following elephant. We were little scared what if the mamma elephant gets angry.

So we use the Zoom functionality of camera and started clicking snaps with elephant. Spending almost 15 min in No entry zone we came back and continued our journey.  After driving some distance we reached near a forest office and check post(forgot the placename at this point) . The sign board says there are two options to reach Ooty. A road left goes to Ooty via Masinagudy which is a short cut and the straight one goes via Gudalloor. We chose the difficult but short route.

Before proceeding we made up our mind that we will not select the route one which the regular cars and busses are going. Passing a small bridge the road again entered into a jungle. We were slow and enjoying the ride again through elephant and Leopard zones. We proceeded some distance through this one way road and greeted with a big mountain in front of us. The feeling was such that our road is going to end at the foot of that mountain. The sight of the valley at this point looked beautiful. Finally the road started climbing the hill as we too had to climb the hill.
Seen the haipin bend number 36/36 sign board , the count starts from the top to bottom. Though the road was narrow it was a good road. After first two three bends I got confidence. My bike could easily handle this in 2nd Gear, some places I need to change to 1st Gear as some vehicles in front of me are slowing down. And a few places my vehicle demanded 1st gear. But being slow and steady I could find the drive was not so bad and anybody with a good driving skill can handle this perfectly. Do not take the warning by some people "This road is only for expert drivers" as these seemed baseless.

After driving through this hill finally we reached the way to kalhatty waterfalls, but since we had to reach Ooty early we continued to drive and finally reached the top. Ooty town is just 2-3 KM from this point and we reached the Cottage without much delay.