Kasargod - Bike trip

[May 14-16, 2009]

Fact file:

Place:Kasargod (Kerala)

Famous for: Beaches, Bekal fort

How to reach:

Bangalore - Mysore - Madikeri - Sullya - Kasargod

What to do there:

Relax at the beach. Don't forget to visit Bekal fort.

Best time to visit: Winter, Summer will be damn hot, but then one can relax at the beach. At the most, u can spend 2 days there.

Place to stay: Probably the Bekal resort is the best place, but it would be expensive. Otherwise, there are several smaller places at Kasargod.

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The last few weeks has been quite tense and hectic for me. First, for the fact that my days in IISc are numbered, I have to catch up with several people on campus and secondly, there is a sudden load of work pressure from several directions. The mental and physical stress is really a tough one to beat ! Thanks to many of my good friends, few who gave me company for tea and coffee breaks and few who called me up during that time, but for them, it would have been a really stressful time.

Before the stress gets on you, it should be released and can there be a better option than a bike ride (during this hot summer heat) to kill the stress. You sweat a lot and thats it - all your stresses are gone :). Our usual gang of people, Sammy, Shishir, Venky, Kunal, Nimish and myself had been planning a bike trip for quite some time and this was the perfect time to seal it. We had just two days at our disposal and we wanted to enjoy it. Everytime, we plan to go for a trek during our bike trip, but this time we decided to go for a leisure trip instead and a beach seemed to be a good choice. After deliberating on several options - mangalore,gokarna, udupi, pondicherry, calicut etc., we finally froze on Kasargod. Two reasons for choosing Kasargod - first, we have not visited this place yet and secondly the drive to Kasargod through Madikeri it seems is good.

This time Shishir wanted to take his Swift for the trip and Nimish promised to give him company. For the rest of us, we were taking our bikes with Venky pillion riding with me. We all got together on Mysore road on Thursday, 14th May evening and started for Mysore. Our plan was to halt at Mysore for the night and proceed to Kasargod the next day morning. Driving on the new Mysore road highway has been always smooth, but offlate, the traffic has increased significantly. We drove comfortably up to Kamat restaurant just ahead of Ramanagaram and stopped there for snacks. Do try the Chilli Bajji if you happen to be there in the evening. Its just great !! From Kamat, the drive towards Mysore was good. One of the general problems of driving on Mysore road was the occasional trespass by people staying on the sides of the highways and people have to be very careful while driving. We decided not to enter Mysore and planned to take the bypass from Ranganathittu and stay at some hotel on the way for the night. It was not very difficult for us to find a place to stay and for 500 rupees, we got two rooms for 5 of us. People were tired - had almost a full day at office, then driving for 150 kms up to Mysore. Finished dinner, watched the dramatic IPL match between Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals which Mumbai XI managed to lose in the last over and then off to sleep.

The next day morning was cloudy and we were set for our next destination - Madikeri. Started our drive at 7:30AM and within 30-45 minutes, we hit the main highway SH88 towards Madikeri. This highway was under construction when we came to Madikeri a year back, but now it was fully ready and it was a pleasure to drive. The highway didn't have too much of traffic except in those stretches where you cross any small town or village. We reached Kushalnagar pretty fast and here started the stretch of bad roads. This road has been like this for several years now and I don't see any reason why this 30km stretch of road is left like this. It took us another 45 minutes to reach Madikeri. After a quick break for filling petrol, we were on our way to Sullya, from where we have to take a diversion to Kasargod. Sullya is on the Madikeri-Mangalore highway and we found the road to be decent for a comfortable ride. This section is a ghat road and although the road is not very smooth for around 40 kms or so, the drive is too good. The greenery of the hills and the sharp turns on the road keeps you engaged throughout. From Sullya onwards, the road to Kasargod is fantastic. We reached Kasargod just in time for lunch and we started hunting for a place to stay close to the beach. We found that the beaches right in the city was not good and we were told to go towards Bekal for the better beaches. We had our lunch at a Chinese restaurant and had "biryani" there. Man, the biryani was just fabulous. After having the sumptuous lunch, we started for Bekal. Bekal is around 14 kms from Kasargod towards Kannur and is known for a fort right on the sea coast. We took around 30 minutes to reach Bekal along bumpy roads. Driving along such type of roads has become a habit for us and the only part of the drive we liked was the steep slope and climb at a certain section. Bekal is in Pallikare village and Bekal Resorts Development Corporation has developed a very nice theme park just on the beach with the facility for cottages to stay. We found the cottages to be very expensive, so decided against staying there and took up a hotel around 500 metres from the resort. The entry to the resort is Rs. 5.00 and the beach there is just fabulous. During the evening, we went to Bekal fort. Its just wonderful. One can get down on the beach from the other side of the fort and spend a good time there, although the security fellows won't let you go too far into the waters. We spent around an hour at the fort and then went to the Bekal resort beach. The sun was about to set, the air was humid and several kids and ladies and gentlemen were frolicking on the beach. We too had a bit of fun playing with a tennis ball in the beach waters. Then it was time to go back to our hotel and relax. We had varieties of fish dishes (how can you avoid fish in malluland) for dinner, then watched IPL before taking our much needed rest for the night. Somehow, we all managed to get some sleep in the humid weather conditions. The next day morning was cool, 3 of us made a visit to the temple nearby called the Ananthapura Lake Temple. We spent a few hours at the temple and then came back well in time to make our trip back to Bangalore. Although there was an option to take the Mangalore route, we took the same way via Madikeri. The drive was as usual very pleasant and we were back in Bangalore by 8:00pm. This ended my last but nice bike trip with these folks. I hope I catch up with them again sometimes in the near future.