Hessaraghatta and Madhure

Another short trip to Hessaraghatta and Madhure, with lab folks this time. A fairly relaxed ride, with lots of bird and plant watching included.

Hessaraghatta Lake

Anchetty Again

Five of us rode the Anchetty Brevet Route to check (and update if required) the cue sheet ahead of the June 1 BRM. We had planned to ride as fast as possible, at least within randonneuring limits, but ended up making a super relaxed ride of it.

Varadenahalli Loop

I wanted to do a 100k ride as preparation and equipment check ride before the second Anchetty Recce, and the Institute holiday on Wednesday provided the perfect opportunity to do so. I had no route in mind, so when Sree suggested exploring a village route from Mangalore highway to Bachchenahalli I quickly agreed. We ended up discovering some new routes and rediscovering some old ones, over the slow ten hour ride.

Tour of Anchetty

An exploratory ride to Anchetty

Anchetty is a small town in Tamil Nadu, unremarkable in most aspects except that it has become the destination for many moderately tough rides from Bangalore. Anchetty is about 490m above MSL (Bangalore is about 850m but the road to Anchetty and back crosses so many hills that the ride begins to feel like a rollercoaster - going up one minute and down the next. Given this fact, it became an attractive candidate for a 200KM brevet route (IISc to IISc) and we set out to recce a proposed route, part of which was visible in Google maps' satellite imagery, but not marked as a road...

Gollahally Exploratory Ride

After a long break from riding I finally got back in the saddle. Decided to explore the northwest area - the region beyond Hessarghatta.
There is a small trail / mud road that crosses the railway lines near Tharabanahalli on Hessarghatta main road.Found a nice loop to Gollahalli then back via Hessarghatta, totalling 60KM, IISc to IISc.

Railway bridge over the Arkavathy

A quick stop for some rest under a shady tree. At right is the other 'broken bridge'. Interestingly, there are two bridges in the vicinity that seem to be permanently damaged.

The 'Pipeline' in Pipeline Road...

Nandi Revisited

It had been quite a while since i'd been to Nandi hills, and I was just itching to ride all week. So I posted a new route to Nandi hills, a near straight line from IISc, and ended up discovering a wonderful set of roads...

Huliyurdurga 200K: Ride against the elements

The first brevet of the season and the debut brevet of the IISc randonneurs turned out to be quite a challenging ride. The beautiful roads and picturesque scenery almost made up for  a combined assault of rain, wind, climbs and unpaved sections.

Huliyurdurga 200K Route Summary

The IISc Randonneurs are all set to launch the brevet season with the first (200KM) brevet slated for 26th November 2011. Here's a quick summary of the route for riders who have not ridden these roads...

MTB trails - TG Halli - Manchanbele

Last weekend, we took off again for a short ride to TG Halli reservoir - a round trip of under 65Km. Or so we thought. At the end of the day, we ended up discovering a great new MTB trail and returned with 97Km under our wheels...

As usual, we started off from IISc at about 05:45H. There were only five riders, Poovaiah on his new FOMAS Road King delux (a two week old road bike, but more on that later), Devendra with his Hawk, and three MTBs - Prakash, Sree (Hero Thunder) and me. We had all assembled at C mess parking - which has become a sort of ceremonial flag-off point - by 5.30. After some debate on the route to take, we decided to head out via NH4 and ring road, to Magadi Road, which would lead us to our destination - the TG Halli reservoir and dam. There was the option of taking pipeline road, and cutting a few km off, but none of us knew the road well enough to risk it in the pre-dawn darkness.

We proceeded at a gallop till Magadi road, all downhill. The first climb on Magadi road was pretty tough and knocked the wind out of our sails. After a few minutes of rest we set off again. About 5km down the road deteriorated into an almost-MTB terrain, slowing us to a crawl. Even the MTBs were having a tough time. But as we approached the city limits, the road became much better and we picked up the pace again. This section of the road, all the way till the T. G. Halli reservoir, is very scenic, with rolling hills, gentle slopes and big shady trees.

We overshot the entrance to the reservoir itself by about 4km. By then we had done about 35km non-stop, and we were desperately looking for some breakfast.A few km ahead is a small village where we downed a few plates of idlis, bananas and some tea.


Then came the big question of what was the easiest route to Manchanbele. From the locals we found that there were two options - go a few km back and ride almost straight to Manchanbele along a narrow off road trail, or ride straight on along the state highway, covering a big loop to Manchanbele. We chose the first.

The trail turned out to be superb. It started off as metalled road in bad repair. Soon afterward the road became a graveled path, and within the next few kilometers had become a trail rutted with tractor tracks. We discovered that the tractors and motorcycles belonging to the farmers along the trail were the only vehicles that came this way.

 About halfway to Manchanbele, the  trail became narrower - barely wide enough to walk - with wild plants brushing our calves.At one point we actually had to carry our cycles across a small gulch. After we crossed the trail became wider and eventually hit the banks of the Manchanbele reservoir.




On the return, we took the highway via Big-Banyan-Tree and the Byayalu station. The biggest problem on this route is, i believe, the lack of good places to have food.