2 back-to-back weekend bike rides, the first one with a mechanized single cylinder engine and the second one powered by my own 2 cylinder engine :P.... i meant legs :) . There was a new addition to our cycling gang of Raghav and Myself with Deepak gatecrashing with his Rockrider 5.2 he recently acquired.
The plan for this ride on 15th May was riding via Harohalli to Bannerghatta and back to Bangalore. The day started with getting up at 5 am on a weekend which is an unthinkable achievement for me if not for such rides :P. The meeting point was at Reebok Showroom at Kanakpura road and by 5.40 am the trio had assembled for a long day on saddle.
[Kanakpura Road- NH209]
Started moving along the Kanakpura road towards Harohalli. The altitude of this place is around 690 m above sea level, a good 230 m below Bangalore's mean altitude. Hence as expected the entire route had more down's than up's and we pretty quickly covered the distance. The morning was very pleasant and the sun was just rising and this part of the trip was truly a breeze with very minimum traffic . Stopped here and there for taking snaps while crossing some beautiful lakes.
Reached Harohalli and one has to take a left turn just after the KSRTC bus stand to move towards Bannerghatta . Even though the first impression of the road was not so good, but as soon as we exited the town the roads become truly awesome. There was no traffic on this road and the roads were real smooth.
Even though on this stretch there are steep gradients ,but every climb is followed by a steep down matching the climb. Hence this resulted in us not able to reclaim the 250 m height we lost via the Bangalore- Harohalli route. Some 15 kms down we entered the Bannerghatta forest range.
[Group Pic]
[Slush Offroading :P]As we continued on this route Deepak suggested we take a shortcut to Bannerghatta , since the road quality was not an issue since all of us were in MTB's. So inquired a local he directed us towards a dirt path, but he was not very keen for us take that path and insisted we take the normal route than the dirt track :P. But we were adamant and entered the slush filled dirt track. This dirt track runs for a distance of around 1-2 kms and having a pretty steep climb. After this we joined a neatly tarred road.
After this section started the real climb. Around 3 kms of continuous climb and that too the road being completely exposed to the noon sun which as expected is very ruthless to cyclists :( . After this climb there was in fact no serious climbs en route to Bangalore, so I am guessing that within the 3 kms climb, we gained the altitude of nearly 200 m +........ it pretty much drained most of the energy in us , with deepak giving up halfway in between and pushing the cycle, raghav at 80 % and me at 90 % :P.After this section the ride through the forests was not much difficult and enjoyable. We joined the main highway between Bannerghatta and Anekal without any issues.
[Bannerghatta Forest]
[3/4 the distance and out comes the "V" sign :P]At Bannerghatta we had a couple of idli's to fuel up for the final assault towards Bangalore. But cycling through this last section of Bannerghatta - Bangalore was quite dissappointing with heavy weekend traffic moving along this road. Anyway we reached the Outer Ring Road junction and Deepak separated to move towards his aunties home quite nearby. Me and Raghav continued on the ring road and reached our respective homes completely exhausted due to the summer sun . I reached at around 12.40 pm taking around 7 hrs 5 mins to complete the 86 kms that we pedalled.
[Route Map - Red indicates the offroading path]Updated Career Stats :P
100's -----------------------------> 1
50's -----------------------------> 3
Trip 'O' Meter -> 86 kms
Time Taken -> 7 hrs 5 mins
Average Speed -> 12. 5 km/h :(
Snaps Link ->
http://picasaweb.google.com/unithin/HarohalliBannerghattaCycling#
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