Ride to Ponmudi

A short ride to Ponmudi, Dec 24, 2006

Silver Bullets got it's web site online and we decided to celebrate it by a cool one day ride to a hill station. We named it as 'Winter Ride'. And nothing comes in mind other than Ponmudi when you think of a hill station here in Trivandrum. This ride was quite eventful and we faced many challenges.

Riders - JSR (Bullet 500), Anil (Bullet Machismo), Babu (Bullet Electra), Jay (Bullet 500) and Gopu (Bullet 350). Except Gopu, we all started from Kowdiar at 9.45 AM. Gopu was back in his home place - Punalur and supposed to join us enroute at Palodu. The road was smooth till Nedumangadu, but turned very bad after that. I was leading the ride while Babu was at the tail end. Somehow we missed Palodu and reached next Junction, Vithura. We gave an SMS to Gopu and waited for his reply. After some time we got his call, his bike was having some problem and he was waiting for a mech at Palodu. He told us to proceed and will join us on hill top if he could fix his bike. The hill climb was smooth and we reached the hill top in no time enjoying 22 hair pin curves. But as some Govt. restriction was put on, we were not allowed to ride our Bulls to the top station. So we decided to stay near the KTDC restaurant and take pictures.

We clicked some pics there and planned to move to some other spots for more pics. Anil's phone ringed, it was Gopu. He was at 17th hair pin curve with a dead motorcycle. We asked him to stay there and started riding down hill. While riding down JSR advanced a little bit and waited for us in a turn to click our riding / leaning pictures. You can see some nice pics here taken by him. After the shoot we rode in search of Gopu. His bike has got a seizure and refused to start. We tried some basic methods to start it (in case of a seizure, bullet usually starts when the engine cools down). But this time it appeared severe and the kicker lever was not moving down. So we decided to return as Gopu could ride his bike in neutral till Kallar. We reached Kallar and again tried to start the bike, but without any result. Now we had to ship the bike to Trivandrum. After some negotiations we managed to fix a rate with a jeep driver, loaded his bike and started riding. Gopu was in jeep with his bull and travel bag. We stopped at Vithura for lunch and had a good meal. As the jeep was slow with extra load and bad roads, we decided to go ahead and wait for Gopu in city. We never knew what was waiting for us on the ride back.

It was 3:30 PM and we were approaching Anad Junction. I was leading the ride again and saw a long stretch with less traffic and people  though it was a small junction. I was at 60 kmph + and passed the junction. I looked at my mirror after 500 meters as a usual practise but couldn't see anybody. JSR were riding just behind me when I passed the junction. I stopped the bike and waited for them to join thinking they might have stopped at the junction due to some traffic block. I was looking at the mirror for them but saw people  looking at the junction and some were running. This time I felt something bad and turned back and rushed to the junction. What I saw was, Anil's bullet laying on the road and Anil bleeding somewhere from his mouth / lips with people surrounded him. Something bad happened...Some localities arranged a Taxi car and we rushed to nearby Hospital. I followed the taxi on my bull. JSR and Babu decided to stay back as they had to take Anil's Bull back to town. We reached Nedumangadu Taluk Hospital in no time. The duty doctor told us the wound is severe and we need to go a good hospital where we can get the service of a Surgeon. She gave him some first aid and pain killer injection. By that time we decided to move to KIMS hospital, which is a super specialty Hospital. From KIMS he got a good treatment, surgeon and team did a wonderful job stitching his deep wound perfectly. You can read more on this on Anil's blog site - http://anil.org.in/2006/12/

(Courtesy Babu TariQ)

More pictures are available at JSR's picture page http://picasaweb.google.com/jayansr/Ponmudi

(Courtesy Jayan S R)

Ride to Ponmudi