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4 days of holidays in the office meant a ride was emminent. But work load leading to the holidays meant that there wasn't time for planning. I'd called Darth and asked him his plans. Since i had only 2 days for tripping (had to spend the other 2 with family, the trip had to be short. That was one reason why we'd chucked out Hampi from the plan. The other reason was that i had another friend joining the ride who wasn't much of a rider in terms of experience (his bike was less than 800 kms old), so Hampi would be overkill for him. But the last minute ditchoo happened and he bucked out due to some reasons. Now it was just me and Darth for the ride. The plan was highly volatile at Saturday night... we reach kolhapur and decide whether to go to Bijapur or Hampi. But secretly enough, the Hampi bug had bitten both of us It was an untold determination between us to reach Hampi (we realized later)
We met at Panvel 6:45 am. This was our first ride together. We weren't aware of each other's riding styles.. but that wasn't going to be a problem. We had breakfast at Lonavala, and proceeded further on the NH4. Breaks had to be scarce... we used to take one at an interval of about 100 kms.
The road was minblowing! All 4 laned upto about Hubli. Both of us were having fun ripping through the stretch, especially Amit after (allegedly) having rode through Bhutan at slower speeds My odo's pointer arm had (surprisingly) broken somewhere on the way, so the only thing i could monitor for the rest of the trip was the rpm.
Had our lunch break at an McD at Kolhapur at about 1.30 pm. Folks in Kolhapur seem to have advanced a lot.. first it was the surprise of spotting an McD at the place and second.. the ladies there.. especially their dressing style (Darth probably knows what i mean )
We were at Hubli by 6.30 pm. Henceforth it was only about 160 odd kms, but it was going to be riding in the dark, and relatively bad patches of roads. So it took a lot of time. We reached the gates of Hampi by about 11:30 pm.
It was all dark inside.. we were hoping to get a hotel to stay inside, but that was not to be. We rode on and reached the outside of Hampi from the other side.
We checked into Karnataka tourism hotel and retired for the night. The staff in the hotel was very lame, but we dd not have the guts to search for another hotel at this time in the night. Our attempts of getting beer were in vain as it was already 1.00 am.
Next day we were up by 7.00 am and out by 8.00 am. The aim was to do the sight seeing till about 1.00 pm, have lunch, and start the return journey by 2.00 pm.
Finally we started the return journey at 2.00 pm. The night we halted at Belgaum. And started next day for mumbai at 8.00 am, were home by 5.00 pm
All in all, this was an excellent trip, and a trip of many firsts for us. Longest single day ride of 750 kms, first time on the GQ, some endurance riding....
Total distance covered? about 1550 kms
Some pics of hampi ride:
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