- Subash Jeyan

This trip was not a 'get-away-from-it-all' thing. I had just returned to Chennai from a fairly well- paid job and at the age of 36 found myself in the singular position of being unemployed. In a way this trip was all about how to get back into things. The long stretches of tarmac blurring past beneath the feet, i thought, should give me ample opportunity to take stock and try and see where to go from here. The immediate objective was Angamaly in Kerala, about 700 kilometres from Chennai. I had two of my long time, for want of a better word, buddies there, Ansari and Asma, with whom I was planning to spend the new year's eve. The day was the 27th of December and with a couple of t-shirts, jeans and a couple of bottles of scotch for the great day thrown into my backpack, i was off on my cbz.

I was planning to take the NH 45 upto Trichy, stay the night there, find my way to Coimbatore the next day and take the NH 47 from there to Angamaly. About 320 kilometres from Chennai to Trichy and about 360 kms from Trichy to Angamaly. The trip to Trichy went off quite well. NH 45 is a well maintained highway though the recent rains had left its mark in stretches. The surprise packet was the road from Trichy to Coimbatore passing through Karur, Kangeyam and Palladam, a stretch of about 200 kms. It is not a national highway yet the road is fairly decent especially from Karur to Coimbatore with very little lorry traffic. And it passes through some of the most fertile farmlands in the whole of tamilnadu. Especially in December, with the harvest season just round the corner, culture's bounty was at its richest. It also has some lovely tea and coffee stalls. Nothing like stretching your legs with a hot cup of tea in one hand and a smoke in the other and think about nothing in particular. One wonders why anyone would want to do anything else. Like work. And one better make full use of these tea stalls before one enters Kerala. The kind of tea and coffee you get THERE would make you scurry back to your 9 to 5 desks in a tearing hurry.


I had left Trichy around 2 in the afternoon of the 28th and it was getting dark by the time i reached Coimbatore. Just before one enters the city is one of the first private sector enterprises in the highways infrastructure: the L & T built and maintained bypass which connects all the highways around the city. The bypass is free for two wheelers but cars and other commercial traffic will have to pay a toll to use the bypass. It had not yet been opened while I was there yet the watchmen standing guard at the toll gate were magnanimous enough to let me use it to reach NH 47. From Coimbatore NH 47 goes through the length of Kerala upto Thiruvananthapuram. More significantly it links Coimbatore, a heavily industrialised city, with its nearest port, Kochi. Hence there is a lot of heavy vehicle traffic on the highway and it would be your bad luck if you are on a two wheeler and happened to be riding at night. Big trailer trucks and lorries screaming past with their high beams on is not very conducive to enjoying one's ride. So I took it rather slow with a lot of stops in between, inspite of the bad tea and coffee, and reached Angamaly around 11 in the night. Nothing like old friends. Especially when they are waiting with an opened bottle of whisky and hot steaming hyderabadi mutton biriyani. Ansari had spent five years in Hyderabad doing his Ph. D in cultural studies and nobody, repeat nobody, I know makes Hyderabadi biriyani the way he makes them. The next time any of you are passing by angamaly and feel like having one, you know where to go.

We decided to go upto Kumarakom, an up and coming tourist spot near the backwaters of Kerala to spend the new year's eve. Kumarakom is 14 kms from Kottayam, one of the main trading centres in Kerala for rubber, tea, coffee and other spices. From Angamaly to Kottayam one can either take the NH 47 again or one can take the M.C. Road. We decided to take the latter, a distance of about 100 kms and this was the second surprise package of the trip. The road is absolutely well maintained and most of it goes through the western ghats. Lots and lots of curving and steep bends for those of you who really like to lean on it. Sometimes one wouldn't know what would come out of the bend just ten metres ahead of you but again that is something one can live with if one likes one's biking.


Upon reaching Kumarakom we set about finding a place to stay. At the very very high end is the Coconut Lagoon, a resort with an island all to itself. This one is strictly for the dollar-savvy. Then there is also the Taj something ( a suitably ethnic appendage). This, we were told, was a favourite with north Indians. We managed to find comfortable accomodation in one of the 'guest houses', households converted into guest houses, one of the many that are all over the place. The backwater lake is one of the biggest freshwater water bodies in the world and it links the cities of Kottayam, Ernakulam, Alleppey and Kollam. There is also an intricate network of canals and waterways linking up with the main lake. From Kumarakom, you can take a trip by boat to any of the above cities or you can hire an entire houseboat for about Rs. 1600/- a day. There are also individual boatmen with their own little snakeboats who would take you out into the lake for as little as Rs. 150/- an hour. If you find yourself there, try going out into the lake in one of those snakeboats at night.

The new year came and went and we found ourselves back in angamaly. And it was time to return. I decided to make it back to Chennai at a stretch. Ansari was too sleepy to make me biriyani at five in the morning. Anyway one shouldn't be pushing one's luck too far. He was kind enough to see me off however. And it was highway all the way back to Chennai. NH 47 from Coimbatore to Salem, NH 68 from Salem to Villupuram and back to NH 45 from Villupuram to Chennai. The CBZ is a wonderfully longlegged machine and though you can also use it as a commuter vehicle in the city, it really comes into its own on the highways. Reached Chennai without anything going wrong past ten in the night. Of course, I had to sleep it out throughout the next day, but then I could afford it since I didn't have to reach any desk in a hurry. But I did have a few ideas now as to what to do with myself. But then for them to grow and take concrete shape I think I need to make another trip.