POV of a Cyclist
Day 1(Coimbatore- Athirapally waterfalls- Perambavoor-230km)
The first day of the tour started early by 4 am so that we can get out of the city by 6 am and avoid city traffic. We hit the highways around 6 am and kicked in riding gears. Since road to Kerala from Coimbatore is slight a downhill, we peddled at speed 27-29kmph. The whole reason for this to achieve our day 1 target of 250Km.
However, once we turned towards our first milestone which is Athirapally waterfalls which was some 30 km from the town of Chalakudy our average speed came down 21-23kmph because of hills and ascents. The road from Chalakudy runs beside Chalakudy river, we took the opportunity to take dip in the flowing river. After visiting the falls, we headed ahead and took forest route. We stopped at area Perumbavoor by riding 230km and called it a day.
Day2 (Perambavoor- munnar-110km )
Since we were short on day 1 by 20km which means we had to start early to cover the distance. We were just 5kms in the ride when rains welcomed us and since we wanted to stay on time, we just rode. The advantage of rains is body recovers while riding but disadvantage is luggage on the bike gets wet and heavy.
Any which ways last 50km was good climbs to Munnar . We had our breakfast at small shack on route to Munnar after doing almost a climb of 15k. While we were just 7km away from Munnar heavy downpour started and forced a hard stop on our ride Our plan was to cross Munnar and reach a place called Marayoor. At this point of time we realized that it would be impossible to reach Marayoor, so we focused on the restaurant in front of us serving hot Biryani and other Kerala dishes. After 2 hours when rain subsided, we continued and ended our ride in Munnar with a good tea.
Day 3 (Munnar- Poppara- Kumily-Theni - 180km)
The day started with climbs right away from the place where we stayed. After 2 days of riding hard starting off with climb can be challenging but the views just gave us the right motivation to push through. There is famous road knows as Gap Road which is from Munnar to Poppara. After in and around Nilgiris and western ghats I can say that this route provides best views . Once at Poppara, we took the road towards the famous destination Thekkady(Kumily). At this point we were already riding at an elevation 1000m with some dense forest around. The beauty of this Route was there are just waterfalls all over 100kms. If you are thirsty drink in, tired then just dip in.
Eventually by 4.30pm we reached Kumily and continued towards downhill which gets one to Tamilnadu. My rear brakes failed while 3 kms in downhill and then I had run the rest of 3km which was fun as well.
At this point we were tired, my bike had break issues, we continued after a short tea break and just kept riding hard. However, when we were just 20kms away from Theni(3rd day destination) rains started. Considering we were on highway in dark we took a break and lost another 30 min like that. There were lots of ups and down on this day. But the ups of the ride really uplifted our morale. For example, a group of kids excited to see our bikes and us, A gentleman inviting us at home for water, A young student rode with us on highway in dark to lead us safely for good 10kms.
Day 4 (Theni -Palladam- Coimbatore -210k)m
Today, was the last day of the ride and destination was coimbatore. This route didn't had hills like rest of the days, however different type of challenges awaited us and that was food. We started at 7 am, rode 30km had a coffee break. This is very "by the book ride" , next stop have good breakfast and then pedal for a good lunch. The next good stop didn't showed up after riding another 30 km, so we decided to stop wherever we find some food. Breakfast happened at 11 am and also it wasn't that good to give us required energy. We thought we will compensate this with juices in an hour. Surprisingly, we didn't find any juice for another 30 km, and we ended up at a bakery eating whatever we had our hand at. The problem with this is that one ends up killing the apetitie for a good lunch. We kept riding without really reaching good place to eat and heat took over us. Eventually at 2pm we just sat at bakery completely blank. The good food was only available at next town Dharapuram which was 25km away. Our bodies had given up. We became slow and the distance left to coimbatore was still more than 100kms. With some rest , we both decided to not to stop until we reach dharapuram and also we will ride hard. We rode in a line behind each other wheel just focusing purely on the wheels of person leading to stay focussed. And by 3.10 pm we were at dharapuram and had lunch. Post this we were comfortable and continued our ride to coimbatore by 8.10pm. In 4 days we were able to cover 700+kms with 6500m of elevation gain.
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