First Long trip in my car.

Duration : 60Hrs i.e. 3 Days & 2 Nights
Distance : 795kms
Places : Sakleshpura, Bisale, Subramanya, Belur, Halibedu

Well it all started when we found that 24th Dec is falling on Monday and 25th christmas holiday can be clubbed together to take 4days off from work and take a break for long weekend. I called up Anand from Chennai with whom I didnt spend much time since I got married, prior to that we used to kill whole night on beaches, bar and at my place and talk till morning 6 AM. I checked with him and he said he could come on Friday night itself and he didnt see much of Karnataka.

Anand reached Bangalore at 8 : 30 PM on Friday night and we straight headed to pack food and get some wines for our trip. After a long time we were spending night together over a glass of wine (like me he also developed a taste towards red wine recently), we talked and talked till mid-night. Before sleep we thought to plan for trip, I took out map and started discussing possbile locations which we could visit and route which we should take. We planned for Hassan-Sakleshpura-Belur-Chikmanglur and then return to bangalore, anand agreed but also said we would visit places "on the fly" as he wanted to make this trip unplanned and just want to drive, I liked it as I was little fasicnated to drive my car for more than 2 days.

Day 1: Morning 5:30 AM

Anand woke me up after he completed his daily chores (as usual he gets up early and I dont get up till 6). We initally planned to leave home by 6 AM and reach Neelamangla by 7 AM but due to night's party we were able to get off home only by 7 AM. I planned to cover this delay while my drive to Neelamangle, we took road to Yeshwanthpur and wanted to take a road to Tumkur from there so that we could reach Neelamangla but due to bad traffic we were able to reach Neelamangla only by 8 AM. We did our first stop to have our breakfast at juntion and took couple of idlis and had a nice good tea. Since Anand didnt had idea of roads in city I was driving, here he said he would take over, offcourse he too was tempted to drive a lot. To tell little about Anand he is driving freak, he hits Chennai-Pondycheery every month and last year he drove alone from Tirnulville to chennai. We were on our way to Channapatna where there is left for shravanbelgona, we need to take 18KM diversion and Anand suggested we should do this while returning, we took a break and discussed for a while and agreed. At chanapatna we stopped to fill petrol, we did tank full so that we dont need to drive seeing at needle instead just go on, our whole objective was to just drive-drive, stop at landscapes and spend some good calm moments.

Before hassan there was couple of cocount vendors and we decided to take a break and drank2 cocounts each, vendor was very friendly and he liked the way we interacted and gave one more for free. I was already full so Anand took it. We reached Hassan by 1:30 PM. Our initial plan was to make Hassan as base location by taking a hotel for night stay and see nearby places and return to hotel at nights. Since we reached earlier than expected we took our maps to re-do all our plans and after dicussing we dropped plan to go to chikmanglur and thought to cover Dakshin Kannada, this was our 2nd plan change. Anyway we changed our plan to visit sakleshpura have lunch there and book hotel and then finish Mangirabad Fort and take a night stay and then early morning drive towards ghat on Mangalore road or visit Bisale ghats. Again it didnt happened as we planned.

We reached sakleshpura by 2:30, finished our lunch and enquired about fort, as neither of us know Kannada better there was mis-understanding in translation and information which we understood was Fort has to be climbed for 5KM trek and is open only till 6 PM (But it was other way i.e. it was 5 KM away from sakleshpura and only 0.5 KM trek to reach top of Fort. ). Neither of us were in position to dare to trek 5 KM and thought instead of seeing fort why not directly drove ourself into ghats and make a stay at Subramanya, this was our 3rd plan change. We juggled our maps again and decieded that we should take Bisali route to visit Subramanya so that we could stop over to see "hill point" which my friend Chandrashekar told in office.

We started driving towards bisale and found route was fully ghat roads but it was not good at all. We were slowing down due to bad road and were driving slowly, but we enjoyed our trip passing ourselves through ghats, coffee estates, fields and making a stop over for cup of coffee. We had coffee at many places but coffee at "Hethur" was nicest and quite refreshing one. My camera dried here and I could take much pictures. We reached bisale at 5:00 PM (which was just 35KMs from Sakleshpura but it took 2hrs for us due to bad road) and took a coffee break and enquired about "hill Point". We liked forest area and even enquired about any lodges, one person helped us to introduce to a person who said we could stay in his house (which has independent entrace as his family is not around) and could pay a decent rent, which is not a issue. We visited his place to find no cots and only mats to be used to sleep on floor, somehow felt uncomfortable to stay in mid of jungle and were afraid of inscets & mosquitos, offcourse which didnt existed there and said thank you to that gentleman and moved towards "hill point" and to carry on our journey to Subramanya.

We stopped a Hill point it had breakstopping view, it was quite scenic and was very quite as no tourist were around. I guess as it was nearing sunset people might have not preffered to come through these ghats at dark as they had bad roads. We were quite for some time looking at valleys and a river flowing down the hills and nearly during sunset we started our journey to subramanya which was 30 KMS away. During our journey we hit a stream of river flowing and took a break to get freshup. The stop at Hill point made us so refreshing that we were completely relaxed and ready to attend nature calls :-). Fresh stream water wash would be a nice treat for our $%@@'s after attending nature call, cant express in words :-). From here Anand took over driving and by the time we got out of ghats and reached Subramanya it was 8:15 PM. We started finding lodges for stay but as it was weekend it was already fulled and we didnt find accept one place who was charing roof-high rent for type of room he was providing. Anand was even ready to sleep in car and suggested we can take public bathrooms in moring for freshing up, I was little hesistant because of whole day journey and he joked to enjoy as adventures day. Anyway after few discussions and exchanging ideas we took our maps out again and thought lets shift our base and see near by town to find a lodge and come back to subramany in morning. We enquired to find that Sulya was 35KMS away and we could get some lodges there, they warned as road to sulya was completely ghat section and driving in night could be dangerous. Anand is pretty experience on roads and he convinced my that he would continue driving, I was little concered as he drove ghat road from Bisale till subramnya is 2:15hrs covering 30kms and he might be too tired to concentrate on road and I am very un-experience to drive in ghat in night.

I was confident on Anand and after finishing our dinner at Subramanya somehow once again we hit roads towards sulya. For first time I had boiled rice as my dinner at subramanya with sambar, not bad. We reached sulya only by 10 PM and after juggling to find good lodge (at one point Anand was even ready to sleep in car) we found one decent one called Prakash Delux lodge. It had good rooms and we were completely exhaused due to which we had a nice sleep that night. We planned to get up at 7 AM in moring and hit roads back to Subramanya after having breakfast in Sulya itself I was little curious to have breakfast there because people were speaking Tula language and culture was different as compared to Bangalore.