Ride to Pondicherry - need travel advice

[Raghu Srinivasan]

Dear Bikers,

My friend & I are planning for a ride from Bangalore to Pondicherry and I would like your trip-advice. I tried searching for any recent ride reports and found just 1 which dates a year back.

The ride plan is:

Day 1: Bangalore to Thiruvanamalai (distance approx 180 KM)

Day 2: Thiruvanamalai to Pondi (distance approx. 130 KM)

Day 3: Return by Bus from Pondi to Bangalore

Ride on Bike: Trek 4300 D (with semi-slicks) and RR 5.2 (knobbies)

Have any of you taken a recent bike ride from Bangalore to Pondi?? I request your advice on:

- Road condition (I've heard from my colleagues that its extremely pathetic and not motorable & definitely not bike friendly at all)

- I could not get seat availability in the KSRTC Volvo Bus for my return from Pondi. I was planning to check locally at Pondi for any Private Bus. I was informed (by some of the travel agents) that many of the Private Bus Drivers will not allow to load the cycle. Is this true? Any pointers here to check & ensure that I can get them to load the bikes in the Bus?

- Related to the Bus Travel, the travel agent & few bus drivers that I enquired here told us that the road condition is very very very bad, and they said that the bikes (if they load it in their bus) will get badly damaged. Is this true? Should we pack our bikes with bubble-wrap or something?

- Should I consider ditching this route and possibly do a ride until Chennai and then take the ECR route to Pondi (of-course spread over 2-3 days) ???

Kindly suggest your views & experience.

Thanks & looking forward to your replies.

Regards,

Raghu

[Ravindra BR]

don't go via tiruvannamalai if no particular idea of meeting aruangirinathar

instead go in vellore - bagalam - kannamangala reserve forest - sathiyavijayanagaram - chetpat - gingee tindeevanam Pondi

the road was really good well a little far

Ravi

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[Ravindra BR]

by the way when r u planning

if during dussehra i may join with my son

we can also do a few dives at pondi

Ravi

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Raghu Srinivasan <raghu...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Raghu Srinivasan]

Thanks Ravi for your suggestion.

We are planning to ride on 5th, 6th & 7th Oct. Do let me know if you would like to join?

Thanks!

Raghu

[murali hr]

I have done this route ! 
Almost 60% of the route is dry and take plenty of glucose as it is bit hot during this time. Only about 50 Kms from Tiruvannamalai the route starts getting attractive.
As suggested u can try out the vellore route -

regards
murali

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Raghu Srinivasan <raghu...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Arun]

Find the route map attached. One is the route, the other is little detailed.

 Route:

Bangalore->Hosur->Krishnagiri->Bargur(Take a deviation here.)->Tirupattur->Singarapettai->Chengam->Tiruvannamalai->Gingee->Tindivanam->Pondicherry.

But the ideal time to travel in this route would be Dec- Feb.

This is the best route or else the alternative will be to go to Chennai and then Pondicherry.

 Regards,

Arun

[aman mohla]

Last year on 1st September, Me and Mohit Kumar did this ride on our Schwinn Sporterra Sport. I did started a ride report about it, but for some reason, it never saw the daylight. Here are the excerpts. 

I had changed the tires to slicks on my Schwinn and even installed a cheap iron pannier on it. Loaded my bagpack with the help of bungee chords. 

Me and Mohit started the ride from Silk Board at around 4 in morning. We reached Krishnagiri at around 8 in morning, where we took a break and had our breakfast. 

From here we took the deviation to Mathur and that's where the bad part started. There are tons of crater sized pot-holes. Since its a state highway, most of the trucks from the opposite direction pushed us away from roads. The road was so bad that Mohit's rear tire developed a wheel bend. The series of bad events didn't stop, my bungee chord broke and after a while I noticed a small opening in my 200Km old kenda rear tire. This bad stretch continued till Chengam. 

There are lot of villages so water and bananas were not a problem. 

At around 4 in evening we reached Thiruvannamalai. Had a super heavy lunch here and realized that the bikes are in bad condition. But since no return journey was possible, we decided to move ahead. 

Hours later we reached Gingee and the highway was pitch dark. Buses and trucks again started pushing us out of the road and hence we decided to spend the night at Gingee. Found a descent bike friendly hotel. After a well deserved dinner, we setup the alarm for 5:00 and fell in deep sleep. Because of our inherent laziness, we woke up at 9 in the morning. When we went down, we found a flat in Mohit's bike. While changing the tube had a quick chat with the hotel owner, who told us about a shortcut to Pondicherry. He wrote down something in tamil on a paper and handed it to us. It actually had directions for the shortcut to Pondi. At around 11 we left gingee after having breakfast. I don't remember what was the shortcut he told us, because it was through some villages, but it really did saved about 30Kms. 

Our return journey was through KSRTC bus. The conductor was demanding 200Rs per bike. We asked him for the luggage ticket and he settled for 50Rs per bike. Private volvos will load the bikes, but I assume they will charge a bit extra. 

[akkm...@gmail.com]

My brother who goes near pondi on a weekly basis suggests the same route as in email below. He does this by car though.

Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

---

From: Arun <ar.aru...@gmail.com>

Sender: bangalor...@googlegroups.com

Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:56:46 -0700 (PDT)

To: <bangalor...@googlegroups.com>

Cc: Raghu H<heb...@gmail.com>

Subject: [BBC] Re: Ride to Pondicherry - need travel advice