It started drizzling just as we entered Kerala around 12:30pm, so we stopped at first opportunity to eat something and put on the rain gear. This was at a rest stop called Travlounge before Palakkad.
Rahul Kool recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
5000km update! This is the fastest I have clocked 5000kms on any vehicle I have owned till now. This is a testament to the ride quality and comfort of the bike. Many folks I talk, to just dismiss this bike for various reasons, I will say just take a test ride and i am sure it will impress you with the magic carpet ride quality.
Did 1500kms round trip last week Chennai-Palakkad-Nelliampathy-Munnar-Chennai. Really enjoyed the ride in Kerala monsoon, fantastic stuff.
All packed ready to go! Left early morning around 4 am from my home
Somewhere on the Chennai bypass
First fuel stop at GST road a few kms before Ulundurpet. I didn’t fill up here, as i had more than 400kms of range left
Chai break
Breakfast break at 9 am in Saravana Bhavan after crossing Salem. We finished breakfast in 1 hour and left around 10am.
It started drizzling just as we entered Kerala around 12:30 pm, so we stopped at the first opportunity to eat something and put on the rain gear. This was at a rest stop called Travlounge before Palakkad, here you can pay and use the rooms for short duration like 2-12hours. They also have a cafe in the front, food was a bit overpriced but decent. I had a burger and put on all my rain gear, including my shoe cover, which reminded me of covid times
Nelliampathy was around 70kms from this location, we left at 1:20 pm and reached Nelliampathy view point at 3PM. It didn’t rained whole way except very light drizzle, so much for putting rain covers.
The resort we had booked was 2kms inside the forest. The resorts folks had given us two options , either we could ride our bikes on the trail and reach the resort or they would take us to a parking spot nearby and we could leave our bikes there and go to the resort in a jeep. Well, you can guess which option we will take !
When we reached the viewpoint, it was quite clear, and nearby mountains were visible. Within a few minutes it was completely covered by clouds and visibility was barely a few meters. We unloaded all our luggage onto the jeep and started following them.
This pic was taken after clouds had already started coming down.
This pic was taken within a few minutes and you can see the change in weather.
As soon as we entered the 2km trail towards the resort it started raining heavily and I couldn’t take any pics till we reached the resort. It was complete darkness inside the trail with barely any visibility, we were riding in below condition.
There were several waterfalls on the way and few water crossings, some of them being knee deep. Lots of steep inclines with big rocks as all the soil was washed out by the heavy rains. It was a bit challenging trail and fun as well at the same time. Bike performed flawlessly and i didn’t felt loss of traction anywhere even with the Michelin Anakees which more road biased tyres.
This pic was taken very near to the resort when rains had slowed down a bit and visibility was restored. There was good descent towards that water crossing and steep incline after that, photo doesn’t do justice to the condition.
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