"Queen of Hill Stations" - OOty Trip writeup

It is really a long weekend, its called "Pongal" in Tamilnadu and "sankaranthi" in Karnataka.
Whatever it is named, we have holidays for 3 days.
Visiting the home town is a common scene for outstation ppl like me, but am not like that, I love travel , adventure and Driving!!!!!!!, Ameen khan another room mate also form chennai, we r on similar wavelengths, he too loves travel , adventure and driving, getting people with similar thoughts seems a bit difficult.

The plan to make use of this holidays was charted out 2 weeks before and my friend suggested Ooty!!!!!!!!
Ahhhh what a place to be in, at this point of the year, its not an off-season nor a peak-season, its called a second season, no huge rush nor any harsh rains.

Our plans started taking up shape as we neared the D-day.
We a group of 9 guys started of in 5 bikes, mine is a black victor, a CBZ, pulsar, yam135, and a black fiero started from bangalore on 14-Jan-2005, Friday.
My bike has completed its 6000 and its the first long trip above 250 kms at-a-stretch ride, and I was determined to get to know its full potential in the winding 36 hairpin bends of ooty.

Our actual plan was to start at 5:00Am, myself and ameen khan were on the dot, picked up rajesh (on his pulsar) from indranagar, went to koramangala and picked up 2 more guys mayank and gaurav.
Headed to banshankari (opp to family mart) this is our proposed meeting point to start the journey, Sudheep (CBZ) and abhijeet r still in their house in cox town and Kris (yam135) still not to be found.
Atlast we found the 3 guys turning in at 6:30Am.
Without wasting a second, we started of on the kanakapura road, ameen and gaurav on ameens fiero, myself and kiran on my Victor.
We were heading for quite a distance and found the other 3 bikes missing form the vision, so was waiting near a tree, we got a call form kris and felt sorry to hear Kris bike going flat.
We found a puncture shop near the tree and informed them to get the wheel, rajesh had removed the wheel by then and got it to the shop, got the tube back into shape in half an hour,
It was a nail a really big nail that was in the tyre.
It was around 8:00Am we again started the trip form the kanakapura road.
Reached kanakapura, had our breakfast there and headed straight to mysore via mallavalli.

From mysore we headed straight to Ooty road via Masinagudi, bandipur mudumalai.
Before entering Bandipur, we spotted a Resort (nilgiris resort), the food was awesome, had a south indian style meals, rested for some 15 mins and started our journey again into the jungle roads.
The jungle stretch was the ultimate riding, we spotted a lot of Deers and elephants on the way
The next awesome road was after the mudumalai jungles, the road was a straight layer of bitumen, it seemed as if it was freshly done.

The major Fun part of the steep ascend in the nilgiri hills was about to start, we encountered the first hairpin bend, the winding ride sent a chill through the spine, we stopped at every hairpin joint to capture the beauty of nature, also we cant count the number of tea's that we had on the way, we havent had so much in our life time, wherever we find a tea shop, the engines would come to a halt, it seemed as if the engines started doin this automatically.

Reached ooty at 5:00pm, rode upto our hotel in charring cross (Hotel Glanton Manor), we booked the rooms a week in advance, and we had a warm welcome from the hotel with 1 big room for 6 people and a another small room for 3 people.
We had a good sleep on friday night, woke up at 7:00 next morning on Saturday, visited parsons valley dam, pykara and other places.

The places were exciting and am falling short of words to describe the scenic beauty.
We started or journey back to bangalore on sunday and reached bangalore at 6:00Pm.

In totality the trip was an exciting one with 9 guys and 5 bikes roaring the roads.