Wayanad – Riding into God’s own country 01/10/1016

Place: Wayanad, Kerala

Distance: 700 km round trip
Type: Hill station, Waterfalls
Ideal for: Friends and family
Bikes: Avenger, Bullet, CBR, pulsar, Apache
Crew: 7 BTC members

While I was casually checking my Facebook feed, I noticed an event – Bike ride to Wayanad arranged by Bangalore Trekking Club (BTC). It had been 6 months since I bought my bike, but I never got any chance to put it on a long drive. This event seemed a good opportunity for me. Without a second thought, I registered for the event and also suggested my colleague – Vijay to join.

Best of the Beast

Winter is the best time to travel. if I have a choice, then I wish to take 3 months vacation during winter and travel to explore more places.

Unlike my usual trips, this time I accompanied BTC. (Remember BTC from my cycle ride to Turahalli?)
Finally, 8 people were confirmed to ride for the event. Travelling long distance as a pillion rider will always be difficult, so Vijay and I decided to take our own bikes.


Saturday morning: BTC declares a strict timing on the events they organise. Unfortunately, Vijay and I reached the assembly point almost half an hour late. The coordinator Amir Khan (no not the film star 😂) instructed us about the rules and high-levelled plan for next two days. I didn’t even bother to run through the itineraries as I had been bored of planning the trips every time. It’s fun to just enjoy the trip and just need not worry about planning.

Bangalore to Wayanad: The ride commenced at 7 am and the Mysore highway was crowded as expected. Still, we were great and tried to maintain good speed. After 50km we paused at Maddur Tiffanys for breakfast. After energising ourselves with tasty idli-vada and a hot cup of tea, we resumed our journey. We took another short break near Mysuru outer ring road.

A short break at Mysuru

We had almost covered half of the distance. From that point, the road appeared smooth and traffic free. The best part of the ride was crossing the Bandipur National Park. While it is safe for bikers to cross this stretch, we maintained biker’s discipline and moved in a pack. Riding through the wild forest was a dream come true for me. The 0 km stretch is laid as a single lane smooth road with great twists and turns. But too many humps were unpleasant at sometimes. Be very careful while crossing this stretch as it’s an accident-prone area. Stopping midway the forest is prohibited as you might be attacked by wild animals at any point of time. Unlike Ooty road, you won’t find many wild animals on this stretch, not even a deer. I was expecting elephants :D. But no luck guys, Sorry !! After a peaceful ride of 20 km, we bid adieu to the forest and entered the Kerala state. We paused for a tea break near the forest exit gate. We had covered more than 300 km in the past 6 hours, none of us had any idea about the stay except the coordinator who in turn was dependent on directions by locals. I had no clue why for God’s sake, he didn’t use maps 😒 and we had to stop every 10 mins to confirm the route with locals.

The stay was in a hilly area, we had to go through a lot of twists and turns, the green tea plantations welcomed us as we gained the altitude. Another 30 km of anxious ride ended after reaching the homestay. Phew !! Finally 🙂 320 km of the ride took close to 8 hours to complete.

Ride through the hilly area’s of Wayanad

Homestay: The homestay had really good ambience. The unique thing here was the skins of hunted animals on the wall including tiger’s skin, bears skin, elephant’s tusk, deer’s antler, 15-foot long snake’s skin. It was a new experience for me to see them in real.

Tiger’s skin and elephant’s teeth

Dead snake’s skin

Bear’s skin

Banasura Sagar Dam backwater.

For a moment we were awestruck with the view in front of us. I finally found the answer to the question why Kerala is called as God’s own country?.
The view of the backwaters of the reservoir was mesmerizing. Probably it was the best view throughout the trip. The coordinator was hurrying up, as we have to reach the destination before the closing hours. I had one more look at the view and filled my eyes with this sight and with a heavy feeling of departing. Nearly half an hour later, we reached the entrance of the Banasura Sagar Reservoir.

There are two things to see here, first is the Banasuramala Meenmutty waterfalls and second is the reservoir. The entry to the falls closes early, so we decided to visit the falls first then to the reservoir.

Banasuramala Meenmutty Waterfalls: We biked another 3 km to reach Meenmutty waterfalls. Falls looked immense and beautiful. It’s not a recommended place to get into the water as there’s no proper place to balance and play in the water. A very short hike along the left side of the falls lead us closer to the falls. Standing close to the falls was indeed a pleasant experience which wiped away our tiredness. While we were enjoying the enchanting view of the falls, the coordinator started hurrying up again and instructed us to reach reservoir before closing hours. Finally, my patience broke and I started regretting the decision of joining a group especially with such an unplanned organizer. My concept of travel is to “Spend enough time at one place and enjoy instead of seeing lots of places in short time”. Of course, if you miss anything you will have a reason to visit it again. Right ? 😉

Banasuramala Meenmutty Waterfalls

Standing close to Waterfalls

That makes up for a great selfie 😉

Damn view toilet 😀 😀

Banasura Sagar Dam: We reached the reservoir. It is the second largest earth dam in Asia and largest in India. Also, one of the Asia’s biggest reservoir. It was almost the sunset time, the sun ditched us and was hiding behind the big mountain, so we couldn’t witness the sunset. The entire reservoir was filled up with water and the water line was visible till the horizon. There are small island structures in the centre which can be reached via boat. Water along with the cool breeze was chilling our breath which made a perfect evening. This one was the last destination for the day so we just relaxed near the dam gossiping and cracking jokes on the organizer. I made two good friends who entertained me throughout the trip.

Banasura Sagar Dam

Sun hiding behind mountains

The place is lit with the Sunray’s shining through green grass

Banasura Sagar Dam

I could stare at this mesmerizing view all day.

Well maintained place

We left the place as the environment was getting darker and we had to drive back another 40 km to reach homestay. Finally riding like a maniac, we reached the stay without any stops in between. We enjoyed another cup of tea after reaching homestay.

We had dinner in the homestay. The dinner was good, the food was delicious and had an authentic taste of Kerala culture. We covered choose 450 km today, it was hell lot of tiring and fun. Eyes blurred and dozed off, we fell to sleep in a couple of minutes.

Sunday Morning: Alarm rang at 7 am. We were all set and ready by 8 am. After breakfast, we took a group photo and started our ride. The plan was to visit the Edakkal caves, Kuruva island and reach Bangalore before 9 pm.

Group photo before starting back to Bangalore

Flop shows: Edakkal caves was just 20 km from our stay and took hardly half an hour to reach the place. Unfortunately, the place was closed because of Gandhi Jayanti. It sounded weird as to why an attraction has to be closed on a govt holiday? Especially when more tourists are expected on such day. The security guard said we can visit the kuruvadweep is open and we can visit it instead. Kuruvadweep is 45 km from Edakkal caves and was expected to take around 2 hours to reach. I had put on the navigation and led the pack as the organizer was slow. Roads were curvy and smooth, the best thing about avenger is that because of its low seat height bending into the corner is easy. While I was enjoying all the curves by bending across the corners. Sadly, at some point of time, I leaned so much that my footrest touched the ground which gave me a little heart attack. I started riding carefully without doing any over shows. It’s always better to wear a helmet and knee guard. We reached kuruvadweep at 12 pm, There was none around, we parked the bike and enquired at a shop nearby. Shopkeeper informed that the island is closed for a month because of the increased water level. WTF!! No one had an idea about this neither the homestay guy nor the security guard at Edakkal caves who informed us that kuruvadweep would be open. It pissed me off as we drove so far yet couldn’t see any good place. We spend half an hour here eating snacks and chit chatting.

Lush green paddy field near Kuruva island

Photoshoot of my darling

Gals, Look at her !! she got better curves 😉

Riding back to Bangalore: We had no other destination to visit so we decided to head back to Bangalore without wasting much time. We maintained a very good speed, again crossing through national park was exciting. We stopped near Mysuru for a meal. By now my ass was burning because of riding continuously on the bike. We have another stop at the Maddur Tiffany’s where we had a cup of tea. BTC has this tradition of having feedback session at the end of the trip. Since this trip was a disappointment for us everyone gave negative feedback especially about the coordinator. After some more discussion, everyone dispersed, I and Vijay rode together till we reached home.

A long road to home

I reached home back at 7 pm. It was one hell of a ride. Though the ride was good we couldn’t visit any places at Wayanad. I want to go there again to spend quality time with nature.

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