Bike
rides in Monsoon will be always special moments, but this time it was even more
special for me. It was my first bike ride with my wife.
It’s
been long time I visited BR hills and while planning for a ride it came to mind
first in the list. Checked with couple of
my friends who were willing to join us, Sunil joined us with his family and
Pradeep also said okay.
So
we were all set forming a group and next task was to look out for
accommodation, this time we booked ‘Giridarshini Home Stay’ which is around
just 1 Km away from BR hills view point/temple.
Home stay contact details: Giridarshini Home Stay - Kiran
: +91 9686588742 / +91 9483325042.
Plan
was to start Saturday early morning mainly to avoid weekend traffic and enjoy
the morning cold breeze. Gathered near Uttarahalli at 6.00AM as per plan and
started our ride.
We
opted Kanakapura Road to reach our destination BR hills, even though it’s a
single road it’s better to take this route compare to Mysore Road, considering
the traffic.
BR
hills are around 170Kms from Bangalore (if you take Kanakapura route) and
easily it will take 5 hours including your breaks. You will be forced to stop
at many places to take pics, if you are keen about photography! We just stopped once for breakfast near
Halaguru, but stopped many times to click pics :)
One
more suggestion is, if you are familiar with this route once try Pipe line
route also. Some stretch road condition is not so good, but it will be awesome
ride for sure :)
To
reach BR hills we need to cross the forest check post after Kollegal, and the
entry for vehicles through this reserved forest range is permitted only from
6.00Am to 6.00Pm. Vehicles are not
allowed after 6.00Pm.
Its
advised not to stop after the check post till you reach BR Hills. Just enjoy
the ride, even though it will force you to stop for photo session better not to
stop.
If
you are lucky enough, you will get to see elephants, deer’s & bison! This
time our luck was limited to witness only bison..!! One should be lucky to see wild animals (whenever
I pass through any forest these lines will run in my mind). Till today my luck
is not turned out…!!
After
wonderful ride, we reached our destination Giridarshini around 1.00PM. Checked
into rooms and freshen up, it was time to fill our hungry tummies. Finished our lunch and spent some time in
relaxing in home stay.
Around
3.00PM we started towards temple (Biligiri Ranganatha Swamy temple), we were
welcomed with heavy rain and forced to stop for almost 40 minutes before
reaching the temple. There is 2 way to reach the temple, one can take steps or
directly reach till the temple in your vehicle.
Temple
will be closed from 1.00PM to 4.00PM, and when we visited the entire temple was
demolished for renovation, after visiting the temple it was just relaxing time
and spent some memorable time in clicking the pics.
Since
last evening we went by walk again came back to this view point with our bikes
for one more round of photo session.
Its
advised to go by vehicle only, otherwise you will miss the awesome view of BR
hills, there is a view point in this route and the view is simply superb.
Enjoyed
the ride and photo session, after starting from BR Hills visited talakaadu on
the way but not spent much time because of weekend crowd.
Headed
back to Bangalore and again took the same Kanakapura route to reach back home.
Overall
one more memorable ride added to my travel dairy and hoping for many more memorable
pages to this dairy with my better half :)
