Ready to Fly: Bike ride with gal-pals to Hesaraghatta Grasslands

The same monotonous life of mine was beckoning me and I was desperately looking to reinstate my lost biking spirit, when a post for a bike ride on BTC caught my eyes.

It was a women’s biking club meet up, which meant I could meet some of my old gal pals as well as connect to, new faces.

When the D-Day finally arrived, I got up early and took a nice shower after a sleepless night full of excitement and got ready to join the first mammoth women’s group ride of my life. One hell of a group ride this was supposed, the first women’s biking club formed by BTC thus taking their first baby step embarking history, marking the first footprint into a new era of women’s biking, with 6 bikers planned to arrive! After putting on my armor and packing small necessities for the ride, I turned on the ignition and pat came her reply…she was ready to take me to my first group ride of the year!

After leaving home at around 6.00 AM, I cruised to the meet-up point. It is a clear morning after a long spell of rain at night. The moment I rolled my bike I felt the chill wind gushing inside my helmet and jacket, making my adrenaline pump up! So badly I needed this rejuvenation, I thought! As a part of the habit, I started with a 50-60 km’s per hour, even though the roads were ultra smooth and traffic free. I got my bike tank full of petrol to feed her and cruised towards the meeting point.

The gang from Bangalore was scheduled to meet-up near Hebbal-esteem mall around 7.00 AM. I, Jyoti and Ritu were supposed to meet near Tin Factory-Hebbal flyover and then drive together to the meet-up point. Around 7.05 AM we were near Esteem mall, with Deepthy and Juby already waiting for us. 10 min later Rajalakshmi shows up with her 11 year old daughter Vaishnavi which was quite a surprise but a delighted one. A few meters ahead, surprises awaited us in form of Piyush and Viru, who accompanied us through the entire journey. I was glad to meet Deepthy, Ritu, Viru and Piyush, the gang leaders and after we were done with the intros, the briefing came into surface!

Piyush briefed us about the etiquette of group riding and trust me they were invaluable! I never cared about formations or hand signals, being mostly a solo rider. All this was so-so new to me! The signals for slow down, stopping and hazard indication were shown and I was extremely excited to see them in practice.

We had a lead and a sweep and the rules were pretty simple:

• Don’t overtake your lead.
• Don’t fall behind your sweep.
• Make sure you can see the one leading you in front and the one tailing you in the Rear View Mirror.
• Take care of the one behind you, if you don’t see him, slow down. In this way, the whole group will slow down!
• If you need to stop due to any reason, get out of the pack, reach your lead and ask him to stop!

All this new rules made me a bit apprehensive. I am used to driving at 60-70 speed solo and overtake any one blocking my path. But riding in a group and acting like one is bit difficult which lead to tiny-winy mistakes.  Nevertheless, a beautiful sunny morning scooting through the country side road, breezing by, is a great way to start your weekend. 

Around 9.00 AM we stopped at a small hotel for breakfast. After fueling up on puris, idli vadas, pulav and tea/coffee we jumped back on our bikes and headed towards our destination. After asking for directions from the localities towards Hesaraghatta Grasslands we finally reached Nrityagram around 9.45ish, parked our bikes and had another round of formal intros. 

Around 10.00 AM we went into Nrityagram had a look around, watched few Odissi dance steps, clicked a zillion pics and exited around 11.30 AM. We then made our way towards Hesaraghatta Grasslands, but unfortunately the place was prohibited due to some naxalites issues. 

Sadly we all turned our bikes and made it back to Hesaraghatta Lake which unfortunately was dried up, but we ended up clicking few pics anyways. Around 1.00 AM we started back to Bangalore, reached our meet-up point, had a feedback session, thus ending our journey. 

I end this journey by quoting “Because its not the destination that is important but the road towards it….”

Written By        : ​Manju Shivadasan

Organized By    : Deepthy & Ritu

Date of event    : 10th August 2014

Members Count : 7

Place                : Hesaraghatta Grasslands

Pictures            : BTC FB Page