Biking to Green Valley

Update: Photos are now in Flickr.

Yesterday night, me and my ol’ PESIT gang decided to go for a biking trip today to GreenValley. The decision all happened quickly and we just decided to go there, not knowing what we were actually going to see there.

Green Valley is about 50 km from Hebbal flyover, Bangalore. As the name suggests, it is supposed to be a very scenic valley.

We had 3 bikes and there were 5 of us – Azmi a.k.a. The Network a.k.a. The Headmaster, Subhojit a.k.a. Sub0 (pronounced SubZero), Rashmi a.k.a. Ms Bubbly, Gaurav a.k.a. The Joker and myself – Swaroop a.ka. G2 a.ka. The Dreamer.

We met up at Azmi’s house in HSR Layout, had breakfast and then started for the Outer Ring Road to  Hebbal flyover and started our journey towards Doddaballapur. It was bright and sunny and traffic was okay at the time. We had a cocunut water stop, train stops (no, we didn’t eat trains, we were just waiting for the train to go by so that we can cross the road), photo stops – when we came across a splendid farm, and somehow managed to cruise along. After a bit of distance from Doddaballapur, we had to take a left turn to go to Green Valley and then we suddenly stop and see a sign that says ‘Welcome to Green Valley’ and we see that its a resort and nothing more!

I was kind of disappointed, but then we decided to enjoy in the resort itself. So, we negotiated the entry price with the manager and then went in. We had a ball of a time (literally) playing tennis, volleyball, table tennis and carrom. Tennis is really tiring, I really wonder how the heck Andre Agassi and all those other players have so much stamina. In between, we had a surprisingly good lunch.

Then, we saw the swimming pool. It was much bigger than I would usually expect. We hadn’t got any swim gear and the resort also didn’t provide any. We still badly wanted to get into it, so we jumped in our trousers :D … it was fun. Hot sun, cool water, tired bodies, happy faces. Perfect.

After a long time, Azmi bugged us to get out of the water and we finally got out. Now, you know why I call him The Headmaster. We took a look around the resort and we found a mini deer park and nice greenery. We took a lot of snaps. Then, we set out from the resort.

We then inquired a passerby farmer and he told us there is a lake down the road. So there was a valley! We raced ahead and when we reached midway down, we were spellbound by the natural beauty and scenery of the place. Seriously, I was over-excited by it. A look at the photos will have you convinced. The scenery was really good – moon rising in its splendour on one side, purple haze below it, brown hills below and finally lush green farms on the ground. We did take lots of snaps but the beauty was simply being there and seeing eye-ful of the range of colors. We stopped at the lake and just gazed and had more photo sessions. A crazy thing was we saw electricity poles in the middle of the lake – how dangerous is that!

Sadly, it was time to go. We had to bike back before it got too cold. We started out and we were literally racing at breakneck speed. Azmi kept racing ahead with Subbu sitting behind him and I had great fun trying to catch up with him (I didn’t want to stress out my dear 7-year old Samurai bike too much) and Gaurav and Rashmi were close behind.

The ride back was simply fabulous. We ripped like hell in those bikes. Of course, at any hint of risk, we used to slow down like anything – we never took risks, but most of the time it was safe.  I simply had a blast. I love biking and this trip was mainly about that. In the end, we had great fun absolutely throughout the day. There was not a single thing that went wrong. Touch wood.

I’m happy to note that yet another of our trips have been successful.

Yesterday, I had blogged about wanting to go gadling, well, in true style I did today! :)

Btw, don’t forget to check out the snaps – there are lots of wallpaper quality photos there. The size of all the photos came to 80 MB! – so I uploaded the photos resized to a smaller size. Just tell me if you want any of the photos in full resolution and I’ll just send ’em across or put them up on my site :)

Route
By popular demand, here’s the route to Green Valley from Bangalore.
It is put very precisely by Azmi as:
bangalore > yellahanka +left_turn+25=Doddaballapur+right towards hindupur+12/15=Green Valley

Update
I took a hot water bath and slept like a log yesterday night. I had the most amazing sleep in a looooong time.  Then again, my cough got worse because of yesterday but what the heck, I had a fantastic time!