Driving Trip

(~1800 words)

A map of my trip.
It's a modest 970 km trip. 

It's lame to say "words cannot describe what I experienced." But, words cannot describe what I experienced anyway [1].  So, I will try to describe some of what I did, saw, thought, heard and on rare occasions - spoke.

My entire Tamil vocabulary can be listed here: Tamil illai (no Tamil), seri (okay), tanni (water), and sappiddu (food). I also know elambicchai palam (lemon) and paasi (polished green beans), which I did not use on this trip. Not knowing Tamil was going to be my meditation pill. I wouldn't have been speaking very much while driving anyway, but this way I was the silent type - the loan rider, even when I reached places.

The focus of my trip was to travel from one geographic entity to another: ocean, mangroves, forests, and hills.

DAY - 1

I started from Chennai at 5 am on Saturday morning (12-May-2012). I drove for 2 hours along the East Coast Road that runs very close to the ocean. I wanted to reach somewhere before the heat got unbearable. As many good intentions in life, this one was kneed and elbowed aside. I had not planned to stop for too long in Pondicherry, just say hello to a young friend I have known since my time as a teacher in a school in Varanasi. Lysa and I had a nice French breakfast and then met her friends and time slipped. By the time I was leaving Pondicherry it was 11 and sun was out to get me. 

I traveled two hours to reach Pichavaram, the mangrove forests, at around 1. Quite unexpectedly there was an ugly tourist compound, with a restaurant, "A/C Rooms", ice cream stall, and a boat reservation system. There were fixed rates depending on the kinds of boats and the number of people. Simple and straight! Nopes. 

To begin with a lone rider was an impossibility. Who wants to go alone (with a boatman)? So I had to pay for two. Which I did. As soon as the boat was 5 mins into the water ways that lead to the mangroves, the boat man offered to take me to nicer places which are not on the "regular route" for double the price. Of course the price I had paid was mostly for the administration, boat man was getting only 40% of the amount. And so the boatmen have found a way to make more money: differentiate the product. for the government price: all lacklustre sights; for a premium, secret coves and interesting views. Corruption? Yeah.

The public policy person who lives inside me got the better of me for the last paragraph. Back to the beautiful mangroves.

The two hours on the boat were still. It was a labyrinth of these thin water paths between the woody prop roots of the mangroves. Very meditative. The only sounds were birds and the shallow splash of the oars of the boat.

I thought a lot about Lajwanti in the mangroves. What would she do if she were here? What adventures will she get into?


After the boat trip I wanted to walk around and explore the dry sections of the mangrove, but the dirty and unkempt tourist compound annoyed me and I decided to drive on. The close-by town, Chidambaram, is a very small temple town with bad broken roads, dusty hotels rooms, and dusty everything else. I spent my night in one of these hotel rooms and did not go out until the next morning at 3 am. Only as a matter of fact, I did not visit any places of religious interest during this trip at all.

DAY - 2 

At 3 am even Chidambaram was romantic. Bathing in moonlight in general (yellow street light in patches) it had finally freed itself from the humans and was sighing a sigh of relief. And then I rode in.
And rode right out on the path to Salem. Not the whitch-hunt kind.

At around 4:05 am I learnt that it's pronounced say-lum (as in lum-p), not sa-lame.

At around 4:15 am I learnt that I love driving at this time of the night.

At around 9 am I was near the place where I start going up the mountains. It is a very small road near a village called Kuppunur. So small that I missed it.

So at around 10 am I was near the place where I start going up the mountains. It is a very small road near the village Kuppunur. So small that I missed it. Again.

And at around 10:45 am I was near the place where I start going up the mountains. And I did.

Being lost at the foot hills was not bad at all. The wind was cool, roads perfect, few people, but  smiling and good natured. Poking fun at me every time I said in perfectly fine Tamil: "Kuppunur?", keeping a long straight face becoming for a lone rider. Third time I asked the same shopkeeper, the way he was laughing was not funny. But Children cheered me on with shouts of "super" and the sign of hand that goes with it (meant for my motorcycle, not me). Lone riders do not care for cheering children or laughing shopkeepers.

As I went up the hills I realised how dependable my motorcycle is, the grip of its hind tyre combined with its 220 cc power (19 bhp at 8100 rpm with maximum torque of 17.5 Nm at 7000 rpm). I was able to go up the hill in the 4th and 5th gear (40 - 50 km per hour) even at the hair pin bends. My motorcycle had come home in the hills.

I reached the town called Yercaud pronounced Ir-cud.
Ir- as in irresistible and -cud as in cuddly.
Ir- as in irreverent and -cud rhymes with mud.

Yercaud is a small colonial town with a lake, many convent boarding schools, resorts, and coffee plantations. I rode around and then walked around the many points with breathtaking cool views of the hills and valley. And then I slept a long peaceful night in my cottage as a lone rider who has driven hours deserves.

DAY - 3

I did not wake up at 3 am. I woke up at 7 am to go back to sleep. Then I woke up at 8 and left the town at 9. I had looked up the google maps and knew that there was such a way, and so I asked around for the way that does not lead to Salem. After asking 20 odd people, I came to the conclusion that people do not know anything! So I looked up the maps again and found out the names of villages on the way so that I could keep asking way to these villages one by one.



That was very smart. With the exception that after crossing the third hill on really bad roads, well, the road kind of ended. Yes. No road. Only a mud path. For 10-20 kilometers. Hilly and rocky. It was the place for the loan rider to be. It was really and truly lonely. And I liked it a lot. Before I was a few kilometers in I knew this was going to be the best part of my trip and I was already planning my return to Yercaud and going up this way.

I fell twice on the rocky paths, but escape without any major injuries, but I scratched and slightly bent a non-functional part of my motorcycle I do not know the name of. It's the metal thing that is supposed to protect my knees.

After reaching the foot hills, I drove on for another hour to reach Dharmapuri. In Dharmapuri I had a great lunch and changed my plans to go to places of historical interest and decided to just drive on through the nearby forests and hills. And thus I drove another seven hours through Alangayam and Jawadhu hills. It was in this leg of the trip that I saw the termite hill.

I was driving thought the enchanting forests bending and swerving along with the roads which I had all to myself; the sun was setting far away behind thick clouds and it was already dark at 5 pm. I could say only one thing to myself: if you see a girl walking hereabouts dressed sexily, do not stop [2].


DAY - 4

Having slept 11 hours in a another badly kept hotel room, this time in Vellore, I was ready to go home. Chennai was only about 132 km away, but I was feverish from riding afternoons in 45 deg (Celsius) dry sun for the days before. I was not sure how will the rest of the day go with fever and driving. It was already almost 10 am and the temperature was reaching where it wants to go on peak summer days like these.

But there was no point in staying in Vellore. So I rode on. Fifty or so slow kilometers on the six lane national highway I crossed the 1000 km goal on my motorcycle. I was dreamily overtaking a Tata Sumo and thinking of trying higher speeds that can be done after 1000 on the motorcycle (as per instructions).

This Sumo had some children in the back seat. I was cheered on by a bunch of boys who were very happy to see my motorcycle. I smiled and made faces at them. A Skoda Latvia was also trying to overtake them,  at the same time and started honking at me.The children jeered and booed at him (I say him, but I did not see who the driver was). Since then the car would go on and wait for me and then race with me. When this happened for a few times, it was on.

The next 90 kilometers happened in less than an hour. It was a safe and gentlemanly and ended very nicely. No rules were broken (other than the speed limits, maybe) [3]. I managed to stay ahead most of the time before and after we reached the Chennai city limits. That was not because I am a better driver, but because there was traffic and many speed-breakers: I could change gears much faster than the car. I did my first 110 kmph and realised the full potential of the fifth gear.



[1] F@#&, that's saying it twice.
[2] Many Bollywood horror movies I have watched as a child have taught me that they usually are not girls. Or humans.
[3] This is a work of fiction and no part of this can be used as an evidence in the court of law.