In the land of religion, war and KamaSutra

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What a rocking weekend it was! Iron Maiden on Saturday and a Halebidu Belur ride on sun/mon.


The idea to ride to HaleBidu & Belur originated while I was going thru the Outlook traveller. It was a long weekend Ugadi being on Monday the 19th, but I had only two days in hand as I was attending Iron Maiden concert on saturday.The distance to these places made them a good choice for the ride.

Another bulleteer friend Kartik was coming along and that was the only company I had.

However, when I got back from the Iron Maiden concert Vasanth called up and told that he'll be cutting short his Wayanad plans and joining us on our ride.. Cool - still better. Who says three is a crowd ;) ?

So the ride began on sunday at 9.15 from Koramangala. The only difficult part was to reach Nelamangala junction, after which it was smooth roads with lesser traffic. We had a tea break at Prashanth's native kunigal where he joined us for tea. Meanwhile Vasanth was on his way to join us on NH48 from Mysore highway, a rather long 30 minutes tea break and we bid goodbye to Prashanth. A few minutes later Vasanth met us after Nelligere.

Lunch break at Kamat, from where the next break was only after Hassan on smooth and scenic Hassan-Belur road.

The speeds were good on the twisties. And before our appetites for more of these roads could get somewhere near to half completion we were in Belur.

The first thing to do after reaching Belur was to get some accomodation, so we chose KSTDC run Mayura for the stay. It is a good value for money option. Good accomodation, cheap bar/restaurant - wat else wud u want ;)


In the evening time we visited the Chenna Kesava temple in Belur. The temples in Belur and Halebidu are from 12th/13h century and have very detailed carvings depicting Gods, Mythology, wars and KamaSutra on them.

It was mostly a photography affair. Coming from the depictions there on the walls we guessed people at that time must have had only these things on mind - religion, wars and sex at that point of time!

We called it a day as the sun set, after which we had couple of drinks followed by dinner in Hotel Mayura. Went to sleep early as had to get up early in the morning.

At 6 AM in the morning we were ready to start for Hale Bidu - And here we missed the turn to Halebidu and instead went on to Chikamangalur!! The roads were empty and nice. It was darker than usual at that time, because of the solar eclipse, at arnd 6.45 we had a good view of the eclipse and we took a couple of pictures.

Boy, it was cold! Never expected it to be that cold in the morning. Owing to the eclipse the light was dim and to add to that it was foggy all over after that. Another couple of kilometres towards Chikamangalur and we realized that we were on the wrong way!

Around 25 kms extra in this excursion, and finally came back to take the right turn.

It was Ugadi and morning time - so no crowd at the temple! We had a peaceful time in and around the temple. Plenty of clickings there and after some time I got bored and packed my camera. Vasanth had a real camera this time and his appetite for photography never seemed to end! I had to pull him out of the temple, literally!

On our way back to Bangalore by 11:30. Mostly the roads were empty and all of us rode fast! We stopped at Kamat for lunch break. After this I was going 100+ consistantly and did some 85 kms to Kunigal like that! Full blast on those empty roads - Happy Ugadi! A long tea break at Kunigal and Prashanth also joined us.

I was home by 4.30. Almost all the roads were free of traffic and I enjoyed riding in those roads. End of ride and time for the 4th servicing of my ThunderBird. By the time I go to Leh, I'd have crossed 15K kms I guess!

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/kamlesh.sanwal/HaleBiduBelur

Ride stats:

Route: Bangalore - Nelamangala - Kunigal - Channarayapatna - Hassan - Belur - Halebidu
Hoyasaleshwara temple in Hale bidu and Chenna kesava temple in Hale bidu covered.
Distance to Belur: Around 222 Kms, Halebidu is another 15 kms from Belur
Overall ride: 512.47 kms
Stop overs: Kamat on NH 48 for lunch and Kunigal for tea break

Riders:
Vasanth on H.H. Karizma
Kartik on R.E. ThunderBird
Kam on R.E. ThunderBird

If: A poem by Rudyard Kipling

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My favorite poem from the school days. This poem by Rudyard Kipling is something what I truly appreciate and with my limited understanding of poems I could comprehend the words. Else poems and I don't mix well!

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

Galibore: Offroading through jungle to Cauvery

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It was almost a year since I did any good offroading. Oh no! I am not counting in the near - offroadings on the broken roads! Otherwise I did ride on pretty bad off roads in my ride to Goa last year, blame it on the rain Gods there were only the remnants of the roads in some parts of the highways (NH included!).

So this time I was expecting around seven eight people to join in. However in the morning time when I tried to give wake-up calls only Amit and Jumbo picked up. Others were dead-in-sleep!

The previous evening I had finished installing my sigma speedo computer on my motorcycle and I was excited for testing it on the roads. Before this ride, we had left punctually on the time but this ride became an exception. I reached the meeting point to find nobody there. Waited till 6.20 when Jumbo arrived. After that it was a long wait for Amit. We decided to wait for him as otherwise he would be riding all alone to catch up with us, otherwise we do not wait for the late comers - they are expected to know the route from the posts and catch up later. In the waiting time I clicked a couple of snaps. Here is sooper-wide-angle shot by me at the reflection in Jumbo's pulsar visor:

Amit reached a couple of minutes later and we pushed off.

Kanakpura road was pretty open at this time. And soon we covered a few kilometers and stopped for breakfast. Tasty but spicy idlis followed by a tasty dosa/tea. After the breakfast I opened up the throttle, I had to see the difference between the stock speedo and the sigma speedo, could not reach the max speed though. The highest recorded on sigma was 98.4 kmph and at that time the stock speedo was showing 104 kmph. Mech errors!

I reached Kanakpura and stopped for the others to reach while using another function in the sigma - stopwatch ;). Amit reached after 7 minutes and jumbo reached after 10 minutes. We bought some fruits and water in Kanakpura and after that Mutatti was the destination.

We reached Mutatti from the halgur side. Unfortunately I had not known that Mutatti was the same place referred to as Bheemeshwari by us :D!! That realization occurred when I reached Cauvery fishing camp, Bheemeshwari! It costed us riding in very bad roads for around 10 kms.

Another interesting bet was that we pronounced "Galibore" in a 'Galley - bore' firang tone which the locals had never heard of! I thought I would call up PKM to ask for directions; but no network coverage!! What to do now? Shall we relax at some place near Cauvery? Or shall we ride to some other place? The disappointment was building up as it seemed our offroading programs were ruined... Almost.

Bingo! Amit knew Kannada and shortly afterwards he found out from the guards in Cauvery fishing camp where Galibore forest was! And to our discovery the world Galibore is pronounced as "Gaadi boray" and that is precisely why we were not getting any signs of recognitions from the locals! So we went ahead of Mutatti, confident this time, and there it was! By the way some very nice roads between Mutatti and Bheemeshwari Cauvery fishing camp.

The offroad began with the three of us and a couple of biker boys ahead of us having pulsars, splendor, Kinetic (!! Yeah :D), and one scooter! Well it was hardly 300 meters in these roads that the kinetic enzgine sputterred, I overtook.. and then Amit.. and jumbo.. Soon we overtook the leader of the biker boys crowd who was on a pulsar.. After that the ride was a bit peaceful, else it was all gung-ho in the jungle! Needless to point out - these guys were least bothered about anything - No helmets!

We reached Cauvery fishing camp in Galibore soon.From here one can keep on going to reach Sangam. However we didn't do that. Pretty happy with the off-road so far we decided to take the detours to reach Cauvery and ride on some sand ;). In this process we turned back to take the first detour. Taking our bikes as far as we could we parked them there in the sand amongst the trees and went to the Cauvery.

Some peaceful moments here, relaxing by the river side and having those grapes, bananas, water and oranges was good indeed. The only thing lacking in this place was some shade so we decided to move on and take the second detour to find a suitable spot near Cauvery and have our lunch.

Getting the steeds out of that sand was really gruelling and when I had taken it out to the main portion of the road I heard Amit's honking! I stopped and got off my bike and went to check the situation.. As hopeless as he gets when I tease him, his bike was in the same condition with the sand. Both the tyres stuck deep in sand. I got on his steed and used his bike's power and a bit of twisting the front tyre to get the bike out and rode it out of that damn sand to where my bike was. Jumbo clicked a picture when I rode Amit's steed back to firmer terrain in the mid of the Galibore jungle.

The second detour was an ideal one and we got shade for our steeds as well as for ourselves.
The lunch was a quiet affair with the bread, cheese spread, jam, milk, cold drink, biscuits, namkeen and water. After having all this we lied down there on the stones ;) and had a good rest. The place was very quiet, not a soul around apart from the three of us!

Peace.. And relaxation..
By the time we checked our watches it was already 1.30 PM so we decided to head back home. The only tough portion was the off-roads in the mid of the day. It was damn hot riding with all the gear in the daytime! Morning time it was a fun ride, come daytime and the same ride becomes an ordeal!

Soon we were done with this portion after having clicked a couple of teaser pix for those who didn't make it to this ride ;) - R u one of those and reading? :D just take a look at a couple of pictures, we toiled hard to capture what you missed ;):

The ride back was good. This time no broken roads ;)
When I reached Sathanur I saw a couple of bikers in the side of the road and I spotted Mr. Goop, an RTMC fella, there. So I stopped to meet him. He was with his company biking mates back from a ride to Bheemeshwari. I moved on to clock some more miles in the smooth roads.
I waited at the Kanakpura entrance to catch up with Amit and Jumbo. After this Cauvery garden restaurant was the next and last stop.

We had tea and omelets there. Amit's footrest had got bent in a minor shake in the offroading so I did some 'kickwork' to make it straight and then it was a peaceful and cool journey back home.

I stopped my bike at my place at 4.30 PM!
Another great ride and a good off-road!

*****Ride stats*****
===============

Route (While going): Bangalore - Kanakpura - Halgur - Mutatti - Galibore
Distance: Around 120 kms.
Not recommended though. After Halgur bad roads for around 10 kms.

Route (Coming back) Galibore - Mutatti - sathanur - Kanakpura - Bangalore
Distance: Around 100 kms
Take this road, mostly in good shape. And most of the portions in Kanakpura road are ultra smooth now. Relaid recently.

Photo links: Click here to see my pictures & click here to see Jumbo's pictures.

**Photo credits: Kam/Jumbo

Sigma speedo: Finally!

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My motorcycle gets a sigma speedo .. finally!

After I bought my bike in october 2006, it was lying in my drawer. Before which it was lying in Dada's drawer. Finally after a lot of delay in getting to mechanic/welder's shop I found out that I could do it myself, no need for the welding and stuff!

Sigma! What Sigma?
Though its basically made for bicycles, its very popular amongst biking enthusiasts. Reason being the speedo's high accuracy (it is acclaimed to be accurate till 180 mph speeds!) and the other functions. Well I am not going to reach that speed on my bike, whatever little I do I need the most accurate information not only in top speed but also in parameters like average speed, trip time, odo etc. It comes with three units - one magnet, that is supposed to fit on the spoke, a sensor along with a wire that goes to the mount, and the bike computer that can be latched on to the mount.

How it works?
When the wheel rotates, the magnet passes the sensor & the event causes the sensor to generate a pulse. This pulse is used by the bike computer to process various parameters, which it does on the basis of the wheel circumference fed in it.

Sigma installation: A herculean task?
It took me around five months to install Sigma on my motorcycle. Finally I did some googling and found out methods by which I could install it all by myself ;) and so I went ahead and all it took me was one day!

Well the first method was the one which caused delay. Sigma is made for the cycles and hence it fits a cycle spoke, and the sensor gets mounted on the bicycle fork. However when doing the same thing one has to take care of couple of other things. The distance between the magnet and the sensor should not be more than 5 mm. Now the idea was to take a cycle spoke, fix the magnet onto it, weld it onto one of the spokes and fix the sensor in the inside edge of the fork.

Don't do it, because of this I procrastinated sigma installation for five months! There are easier methods available, which you can carry out easily.

I selected a different magnet which is more powerful than the stock magnet (Easily available in the stationary shops in the button type stick ons, just take the magnet out), and can be fixed to the spokes. The sensor goes along the original speedo cable itself. The wire from the sensor to the console is around one and a half feet short for the motorcycles, so I sacrificed my Sony headphone wire, which is a thin wire with a dual core wiring same as the sigma speedo wire. got it soldered to the original wire, and done!

Glued the magnet to the spokes, sensor to the stock speedo cable and used insulation tape to hold them at their place. I glued the mount to the left side of the handle.

Thats all ;)
Now I get the speeds based on the wheel parameter and no errors on account of no mechanical mechanism.

It is zimblee awessssum!!

For the various models available in Sigma check out: http://www.sigmasport.com/en/produkte/bikecomputer/