Ride To Yogavana Hills

Friday Afternoon:

I am slogging at my desk to complete the pending work before the day ends. Suddenly a thud takes my concentration away. I clear the blinds and find it is the gush of wind hitting my window pane.

Mother Nature has set everything in topsy-turvy….the open-air smoking bay down the stairs is a complete mess with ash and butts floating on the water. The hail storm settles after an hour.

Vishy’s SMS comes. “Man tomorrow’s ride will be really cool or rather chilled J just look at the rain and wind blowing”. Amidst all the serious stuff of office I have forgot that I have a ride tomorrow. Yogavana Hills trail ride. 

Saturday Morning 4:40

My mobile vibrates with alarms and I jump out of the bed to switch the light on. Pedal-Ripping starts. Leaving the cozy warmth of bed, the biker starts the day at 5:10 am. As promised, I wait for Karthik at Diamond District and then move on after finding no response to my SMS and phone-call. Poor guy must be sleeping!

At 6 o’ clock I am at Merida Junction (erstwhile Family Mart Junction), J P Nagar, 100 Feet Road. People pass on their “HI” s with a cup of tea from the chai-stall. Early morning tea with biscuits……takes me to the days of higher secondary exams when my mom used to wake me up with a sentence, “the tea is ready.”

We start our ride. Early morning breeze with a overcast sky set a perfect beginning to start our biking. Me, Vishy, Nitin, Vinay, Praveen, Murthy, Pradeep and Prashant. After a while Prashant leaves us for NICE Corridor riding. This guy wants to practice some stunts.  We go ahead.

All I can hear is heavy wind passing by my ears and the sound of gear- shifting. Kanakpura road has good scenery on either side of it. One gets good learning of gear ratios when he is practicing them. (Front Derailleur) 1: (Rear Derailleur) 2-3-4, 2: 4-5-6-7, 3: 6-7-8. Sometime back, I learnt this from one of the websites.

After half an hour, we take a break. None of us are looking tired. 5 minutes of chit-chats and laughter. Bikers move one. Nitin introduces himself. This lad is from Rohini, New Delhi. We start discussing the usual stuff like how things are different here from Delhi.

We reach the point from where we need to take a right. It is a typical off-road biking track. The trail is rocky, kaccha, bumpy….whatever you wanna call. Roadbikers have to be extra-careful. But we all are on MTBs.

The fork suspension helps me a lot. By the time this stretch ends, we find the bakras making their way. One dog starts chasing Murthi. The brakes are so perfect that the bike stops then and there and he falls from the bike. Murthi loses his balance. Let's check the bruises. It could have become fatal! Thanks to the gloves and helmet, our man is perfectly OK.

 

Time to pedal up the hill, making our way through the big stones and bushes! The road is not maintained at all. After certain limit the bikers start walking, because there is no road. A lonely temple up there is welcoming us. We park our bike at the base of the staircase and then climb up to the temple. One can get an amazing view from here. It’s 7:30 am. The clouds are still hugging the remote mountains that are visible from the top of Yogavana.

Pradeep starts clicking. I forgot to take the cam, so take out my mobile phone and freeze some of the moments. Another round of biscuits and water; another round of talks and sharing. Murthi cracks some episodes of “Khosla ka Ghosla” and we all start laughing at the character of Kishan Khurana (acted by Boman Irani). No doubt this actor is a gem!

8 am

Time to be back on the saddles!

Pradeep loads the photographs on to his flickr from his mobile.

Riding a rocky downhill is difficult yet enjoyable. Total control needs to be put on the bike and your body. Fitness and sense of maintaining the center of gravity help a lot in this. This time we find uphill roads and my energy level drops a bit. I put the ratio at 2: 4-5. It gives me realaxation of muscles.

After an hour of ride we find a hotel. Very neat and clean! So we gorge on our breakfast! Idli, Vada, Tea and Orange Juice. The food is cheap yet hygienic. We check out the time, it’s 9. Another 18 kilometers. The Sun is not yet coming out of the veils of cloud. We move on!

Here comes NICE corridor and we take a break again! This time we wait for Pravin who is real slow as he is not able to maneuver the gears of his newly bought Trek. After a brief gyan session to Pravin on gear ratio, we head towards Merida Junction.

10:15 am

we are standing in front of the Merida Showroom, waiting for Navin to come back and open the shop so that we can check out some biking shorts and all other stuffs. We call up Navin. Navin is doing some dirt jumping at Sarjapur on his UMF Hardy and will be back after half an hour. We call him up once again. This time he says that he has a got a flat-tire. He will be late. Enough of wait! Time to get home!!! I am feeling hungry! 

For more photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/amartya.k/YogavanaHills#