Ride to the Grand Canyon of India ( Gandikota)

 A day ride from Bengaluru to Gandikota. | The Crew: Prashanth(Duke 390), Kaushik(390 adventure), Sarath(Z650)

Location: https://goo.gl/maps/umJPHcvxgwmPtTx6A

About the place: Wikipedia to make life easy(for me 😄 ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandikota

Background: It was new year and had been a while since I went on a motorcycle ride, I had switched my role in office and was working for a new team and still had time to plan such small outings. The plan was to ride to Gandikota on Republic day but we couldn’t do it since Kaushik was yet to recover completely from COVID-19 , so we decided to push it . Fast forward two weeks and he was back in shape so eventually republic ride almost became Valentines day ride(FYI: It was on 12th and not 14th). On 11th evening I meet Sarath for the first time and we got his chain lubed so that the beast is all set for morning.

TheDay: Plan was to leave our places at around 5:30AM but we were late by 10-15mins. I meet Sarath at JP nagar metro station and immediately encountered the traffic near Banashakari. Somehow we moved our bikes well enough and got out of the city quick and meet Kaushik near Yelahanka(Lucky guy did not have to face the traffic). The broad 6 lane road opened its arms wide open for us and we started riding feeling the cold breeze all over. We had a quick chai break(Fuel for the body you know 🤷‍♂️) and spotted a lot of superbikes pass by. This is where things get interesting, we start the bikes and Kaushik took a big lead and moved way ahead of us and stopped at next signal, I stopped just behind him to notice that his rear number plate was missing 😄. Within couple of mins Sarath confirmed that the bike had number plate when we had stopped for chai. (Poor 390 Adv).

The Accident: We continued the ride and were enjoying the beautiful highway and encountered a biker who had got a spot on collision with a truck. I had seen many accidents before and had stopped and helped the victims but somehow this was really disturbing and for some reason I couldn't stop there and just continued riding. 2-3KM from the spot I stopped on the side of the road and 3 of us were really disturbed and Sarath suggested to stop riding for a while and at least have breakfast and get our minds cleared.

We stopped at Swagath Delicacy opposite shell fuel station and had a quick bite(The food was good).

20KM from our location we had to take a deviation near Boodili where we exit the national highway and enter the state highways where the roads were 2lane and need to be mindful before raising the throttle. These roads had few rough patches and a lot of massive speed breakers. We encountered a lot of villages on the way and few idiots on bikes and cars who were moving on the road irresponsibly( Me and Sarath had an encounter where Sarath almost had to stop his bike else he would have crashed onto couple of ladies who were on their scooty).

First picture of the ride.

Piece of advice: Do ride at a comfortable pace when you are passing villages as most of the riders there did not use their mirrors/indicators and turn randomly. Also there are couple of stretches where you would encounter eunuchs in the middle of the highway where speed breakers are installed, sneak out as quickly as possible.

The roads have very bad patches and the sun will be in full form to bake you up completely, we encountered some very beautiful spots on the way which are made to take photographs . especially if you are on motorcycles.

Orange and avocado sandwich.

We reached the location around 11:30AM and now comes the struggle, the heat was at its peak and our jackets and t-shirts were hugging us a lot more than we wanted with a thin layers of sweat in-between. I had asked Sarath to carry a mask and he was not sure how much crowd this place could have but was now surprised to see so many tourists. We clicked few pics, jumped on the rocks for a while and spent some good time.

What a view....

Gues the number of horses infront of the fort!

And now we were hungry. Just couple of KMs before the fort there is a hotel named Haritha which is being run by AP tourism where we had our lunch, it was a simple Andhra meal and price was affordable (They take only cash, don’t rely on Gpay if you are visiting the place for food) .

We were able to rest well there and started our journey back home at 2PM since we had 6+ hours of riding left to reach home. Our return journey was more tiring since the heat was high and bad roads added fuel to the fire and we stopped quite few times , however we were lucky enough to find a alternative road which reduced our ride time by almost 1hour and the road was in really good condition with crazy corners.

Another Issue: Sometime before hitting the highway I noticed that my rear mudguard was loose but I ignored it since it always get loose whenever I got a bad patch, but the rattling noise was too high and was surprise to see the component broken completely. While Sarath worked on removing the bolts I visited villagers to get a thread to tie it back to my bike. We were lucky here and i got some good thread and tied it to my bike in such a way it covered my tail light!!! now that's something to worry about.

We soon reached highway and were so happy to see the beauty of the roads which really allowed us to open the throttle the way we wanted(Especially for the Z650) . Sarath had to fuel up and he stopped at Shell which was opposite to the hotel where we had breakfast and hopped in there again to snack a bit. Me and Sarath were a bit jealous of Kaushik as he wont be experiencing the traffic and will reach home and take a good nape even before we reached home.

We gave a goodbye to Kaushik at Yelahanka and the moment we entered Hebbal the high pitched honking and rays of taillights from heavy traffic greeted us and asked us to join the party. Now our bike engines were so hot we could feel it on the legs continuously. It took us about 40mins to reach home after that despite encountering red lights at multiple signals.

Advice time: For the folks planning to visit the place I would suggest you to carry/follow :

• Water from home as buying bottles out side will only result in plastic dump.
• A cap/umbrella would be helpful as the heat was too high.
• Goggles are a big Yes.
• Food is optional, but would recommend you to carry some snacks.
• Storage: Carry a helmet lock, and if you have panniers then lock your jackets in it.
• Be mindful of your speeds and control over your vehicle.

A humble request would be to not litter at the location 😊 lets be mindful of our planet and our future generation. If you visit the place do let us know your experience.