“If we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet”- Rachel Wolchin
A motorbike is a man’s first love. A majority of men love to go on a ride on their motorbike. Going on a bike ride in a group can be a great experience, especially with fellow bikers who share the same wavelength. One such biking club in the city is Riders of Metal Bird (RMB). This group travels for a cause. Tony Raj is the founder of RMB. Recently a few members of this group embarked on a biking expedition. Here’s more.
The group planned to go on a circuit trip covering Coimbatore-Munnar-Vagamon-Thodupuzha-Nattika Beach-Thrissur-Coimbatore covering 800kms in 2 days with night stay at Vagamon. The whole trip spreads across all possible terrains found in the south, covering plains, valleys, plateau, mountain, and sea.
The trip started off before RK Photo Studio at Race Course road in Coimbatore at 6 AM on October with 15 riders in 8 bikes (the bikers travelled in pairs). The ride started at 6:30 AM, the goal was to reach Udumalpet at 7:30 AM. One person was picked from Pollachi by 7:25 AM and the riders continued their journey towards Udumalpet.
En-route to Udumalpet they came across the view of windmills which was really awesome feeling. This reminded a few of them of their childhood days when fans made of paper were placed under the ceiling fan. Ironically, the hand-crafted paper fans rotated at a faster speed that the other fan.
Moving ahead with the times, this group was joined by two more riders at Udumalpet, and total number of riders who embarked on this journey was 18. The riders stopped at a restaurant in Udumalpet for breakfast and started their journey towards Munnar.
As the bikers travelled further, they could see some mountains but the roads were becoming narrower. They least expected any trouble. Just before they started going up the mountain, they found out that one of the bikes who accompanied them, RE Classic 500 clutch cable gave up. So one of the riders along with the owner of Classic went to Udumalpet to get the clutch cable. The group took a break till they returned.
The bikers who went for the cable returned and started fixing the clutch and soon they were ready back on the track after a substantial amount of time had been wasted. At this time, the bikers had just one target in mind, reaching Munnar by 1 that noon.
The group took breaks at two places because of their thirst. At 1:30 PM the riders had 15 kms to reach destination Munnar.
By 2:05 PM they reached Munnar situated 5200 feet above sea level on the Kannan Devan Hills covering an area of nearly 557 square kilometres.
Watch this space for updates about this biking trip as the rest of the story would be continued in next part.
