A Third man's Perspective: Romantic Nature & Mighty Machines .......A Travelogue on our bike trip to munnar

A Weekend with sweet memories of a great road trip .. It is a herculean task for me to pen it down to my blog... Let me try it out..

It all started during a normal 'Tea time' Conversation to plan for a trip .... then it went in to discussions, mails,chats and what not... After planning of 2 months .. we decided with the location as munnar . But we were still not sure about the bikers and pillion riders . After some motivating efforts of some people the planning went fine and we finally planned for the first weekend on March (March 5,6) as the dates for the trip .

Then it was time for great planning and Team work .. Some from the team came with places to visit in Munnar , some with route map .We even joined for a meeting in cafeteria for planning (Tough to happen in our hectic schedule). Paper chits with contact details of the team and emergency contact details were provided for each of us.
WOW !!! it was so exciting to see the enthusiasm by all.. I was eagerly waiting for the 'D' day. As planned we decided to start by 5:00 am from vazhakala.

March 4th 11:30 pm , May be due to excitement of the trip I was not getting sleep that night .. I packed my bag and tried to sleep ... I was little tensed above the 400 km road drive also. I kept the alarm at 3:30 am ,closed my eyes and waited for sleep to join me .

Day 1 (March 5th 2011):
TTTTTTTTTTTTTRRRRRR.... It was Preetham who was calling me on my phone... He called all of us at 3:30 am to make sure everyone is awake for the trip. I was wondering whether he had slept that night.. I was not drowsy and neither I was missing my sleep. I got up and freshened and was ready by 4:30 am . As planned Jubin came and picked me up from place and we started our journey by 4:45 am. My roommate who was having night shift was just arriving back home.

We all joined together at Karingachira and started our journey . Next pit stop is Muvattupuzha. We reached Muvattupuzha by 6:00 am (Approx 40 km) , we have a cup of tea and we started our planning. The next pit stop planned was Adimali (approx 50 km )where we decided to have our breakfast.

Sun had also started it journey for a bright day as we were... The cold climate was still making the nature sleepy.. 3 Royal Enfields and 2 Yamaha FZs making its way nearing the new district of Idukki.

Passing through the places like Neriamangalam, Kothamangalam etc . We reached adimali 7:45 am.
We stopped near Cardamom Restaurant which seems to have just opened sometime while ago. We had a very good breakfast with some photo sessions (We had 4 camera's and a couple of good camera mobiles)

After an hour long break we started our 30 km journey up to the hills of munnar. There was no planned pit stops before munnar, The journey up the hill from adimali to munnar town was the best of the whole of the journey . Surrounded by thick forest and small and curved roads. There were couple of waterfalls like Cheeyapara falls which also got our attention. There were some interesting places also where we passed through Anaviratty (may be people would have been frightened by elephants) , Kadaripara(Bear rock ) were some of them.

After a pit stop of a photo session we continued our journey to reach Munnar by 10:15 am . We had already booked a cottage for our night stay . We checked in to Kurunji Cottage at 10:30 pm, kept our bags and rested for some time. We planned for the day's trip and evening plans during this period.

We booked for a camp fire session at one location where Camp fire is conducted. Time slot provided to us 8:00 pm to 10:30 pm . After booking camp fire, we started our journey to marayur (as per the initial plan we had Chinnar also in the list which is 20 km from marayur). The trip through the wide spread tea estates of Tata and other big giants , we were moving slowly towards marayur(40kms approximately from munnar). After 20 mins travel we saw a big crowd near one bridge.

Wala !!! it was a film shooting which was happening in on scenic place . We put on the brakes and parked our vehicle to see Thamanna and Dhanush . We somehow reached near to the location and we could see some closeups of them. Later we came to know it was song shoot for the movie Venghai .

We continued with our journey as they also continued with the song shoot. After a long ride of 2 hours we reached Marayur. Road side full of Sandal wood trees protected with fences Marayur was a protected forest area. After some discussion we planned to make our journey back to munnar after lunch. We were more concerned about the camp fire planned for the night. After a great lunch and a Roadies photo shoot we returned back to munnar. We did have many pit stops and photo session in middle (4 Camera and crazy photographers ...can't argue for it ).

We also stopped over at Lakkom waterfalls for photo shoot . On our way back we saw movie team continuing their 'JOB' . We reached back at our cottage by 7:30 pm . After couple of minutes of rest we moved across to the place where we booked for the Camp Fire.
3 hours of Music and dance (With no Hindi songs :) ) we did had a great time.

We reached our cottage by 11:15 pm . Had a great Homely dinner as we had requested for dinner at the cottage itself. Around 11:45 pm 5 of us decided to go out for a walk to have some tea. we walked in cold chilling weather for 2kms to understand that we might not get any Tea at that time :P.
As we were planning to move back to the cottage we got to meet a new friend, an Auto driver. we wanted to know whether we can get a cup of tea at that time . We asked him for the same . He took us to a coffee shop where we had the best ever Black Coffee in my life. Wow !!! it was refreshing . The Auto Guy dropped us back to our cottage by 12:45 am. We had a great night's sleep after that.

Day 2 (March 6th 2011) :
We all were ready for the day two by around 10:30 am. We had a RICH Breakfast in Hotel Silver Spoon (I think the hotel cost everything in Dollars :P ) and started our towards Mattupetty Dam and other places.

Mattupetty Dam was beautiful , But the Traffic Jam after that was Horrible. We got to see Cattle Farm (from outside) and Echo point . After some group photo sessions we moved back as we had planned for shopping before starting Journey back home. Came back to cottage , Settled the Bills , Had a round of shopping (tea,Chocolates etc) and started the journey back to Home.

Day two was not Hectic as Day1 , But we got to see the best natural beauty during the trip to mattupetty. Day 2 Really proved why Munnar was chosen as Honeymoon Location. Nature was too romantic as a Feminine Beauty and our might machines proven romantic on that day. Some where moving ahead and some were broken down on its beauty :).

We did had more pit stop during our journey back home. We stopped mainly to have rest and there some old vehicles which were stopping often. Reached back Adimali by 4:30 . As we were hungry enough we had something to eat before we continued .

We reached home by around 8pm , Tired but the heart was jumping in Joy . Though the Trip for 2 days it felt much bigger. With Wonderful memories and great lesson we had a great weekend to be always cherished in the life.

Rocking Roadies !!!