Bike trip to Yercaud...

Last weekend was a long one as we had friday off. Myself and Dorjee were earlier planning to goto Kanyakumari but the fact that it's very far and unavailability of train-tickets made us to change the plan. It had been long time since our last bike-trip. So we decided to go on a bike-trip and we chose the place to be Yercaud. 230 kms from Bangalore, situated in Tamilnadu, this place is called poor-men's Ooty. Initially, we were only 2 people but then Ankur, Atul, Body, Paurush and Shankar joined us totalling 7 of us.We decided to leave from Bangalore on friday early in the morning at 5 AM so that we can beat frustrating city traffic.

At 4:30, when I got up, weather was really nice and sky was very clear. I called everyone to get ready but by the time we started from Thippasandra, it was already 6AM. We picked Paurush from Silk Board and started our trip. We had 2 Unicorns, 1 thunderbird and 1 Karizma on this trip. By the time, we reached Hosur, it started drizzling but we thought it as Bangalore rain, very localized and we keep driving. But it started pouring heavily later so we had to stop for sometime and waited for the rain to stop or slow down atleast. It slowed down after a while and we hit the road again. Now it was great road NH7 ahead. It was still drizzling and we were all drenched still our speedo was reading atleast 80. A very exciting drive till Krishnagiri. There we decided to have breakfast and then move. We stopped at a very small Dosa stop had breakfast there and started again. Now the road was not good. A lot of construction work was going on. At many places the road became single lane. It was the same till milestones started reading Salem 30kms.. From there again it was great road. We reached Salem (Pronounced as Selam) at around 12:00 in the noon. We had our lunch there and there started to climb for Yercaud. From there it's only 24 kms of climb with 20 hair-pin bends. This drive was very pleasant with a lot of picturesque scenes on the way. We stopped at 2-3 places to admire the nature and of course to capture it in our cameras.

We reached Yercaud at around 3 PM and decided first to see Kiliyur falls and then look for accomodation. It was 3-4 kms away from Yercaud lake and we had to walk around 0.5 kms. Since it was raining, all the way it got very slippery and only Dorjee, Atul and me decided to climb down. Others went to look for hotel. Killiyur fall was good but not worth risking our lives that we did while descending that slippery way...:). By this time other guys had settled Hotel Shevaroys for staying. We went to hotel, rested for sometime and then went to see Lady's seat. We reached there at around 7:30PM .The night view of Selam city from there was very beautiful. After that searched for daaru but only to know that this was a dry day. Still we managed to get it from Shevaroy's Hotel.

Next day, all daarubaz got up early in the morning to see sunrise from Pagoda point. We reached there but it was a lot of fog there and there was no chance of sunrise before 8 or 9 o'clock. Still it was very nice walk in the foggy weather. We returned to hotel and again went to Pagoda point at 8:30. It was magnificient view from there. Then we went to Shevarayan Temple. This was the highest point in Yercaud I think. Again it had got great view of the Hills around Yercaud. After this we went to Yercaud Lake, did some boating. After that we had lunch at Silver Oak restaurant in Shevaroys and started back. Downhill ride was great. I turned off bike's engine and rolled down. Till almost 20 kms I didn't have to turn it on. After that we had a small break in Salem, then Dharmapuri. After Dharmapuri, there was a Y junction where I took the wrong road. DK was with me. We asked a few persons if the road goes to Bangalore, they all said YES.. but we knew this is not the road we came by. It was painted like car rally road. All the trees besides the road was colored in black & white checkers. After quite long distance, we got a signboard that was written also in English. By that we came to know that the road surely goes to Hosur and Bangalore but not to Krishnagiri. By the way road was great, far better than the NH7 stretch between Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri and very low traffic on that. But we decided to get back to NH7 because of 2 reasons. First was that we dont how long this is gonna be a good road. And secondly it was getting late and there was no traffic, very few people. So if something happens, we would have had a problem. So from Palacode we took the diversion to Krishnagiri thinking that it was only 16 kms of diversion but turned out to be 31kms. We joined our gang again in Krishnagiri and started for Hosur. In Hosur it started raining again but didn't stop. We finally reached Thippasandra at around 8:00PM. Overall it was a great getaway for a change.

Fast Facts about Yercaud:-
Distance from Bangalore : 230Kms
Route : Bangalore -> Hosur -> Krishnagiri -> Dharmapuri -> Salem -> Yercaud
Road condition : Hosur to Krishnagiri Great expressway. Krishnagiri to 30kms before Salem (not so great but still good)
Destination type : Hill stationTrip type - Weekend getaway