Post trip writeup - Cycling to Pulicat Lake 16-17 Mar 2013 - Karteesh Mamidi

Write-up by Karteesh Mamidi:

This is my first write up and first trek. A trip with 5 new people on MTB for 130KM, who were my good friends by the end of trip. I am much thrilled awaiting for this trip.;

On Friday i got a MTB bike, The day started at 2.30A.M we are supposed to meet @ Thiruvanmiyur Jayanthi Theater at 3.30 A.M. By the time we reached there RAM was waiting with list of people. Before we start our trip we heard first puncture from Kumar ji, he fixed it and joined us, meanwhile Avais Sait came on his Swift car and we started our ride by 4.00A.M. At Marina beach Anand joined on his road bike, we were introducing with one another while riding. We all are going well, i felt exhausted after pedaling for few KM. We had our breakfast at Minjur in a small hotel (Kumar Ji photography started from this place)

After that we again started our ride now the second puncture of the day was for Ram's bike. We helped our self to change the new tube.

After that we have not even pedaled for 1K.M Anand's road bike got punctured, Fixing punture for road bike is one of the tough part :P;

We have fixed it, mean while many kids in the village gathered there to see the bikes, few even went for a ride on my Bike;

We got refreshed there, few people helped us with water :) Later when we came across a small pond in a village, Anand had a dip in it;

Here comes Anand ...

The climate has become too hot, we are almost near to Pulicat (Palaverkadu) village. We saw a nice flowing river and stopped to take few pics.

Only from the map I have noticed that this canal in which we all had bath in our return journey is connecting the Pulicat Lake to Pichatur Dam next to Nagala Hills. This canal is passing thru Nagalapuram, Uttukottai, Periyapalem, Arani, Puduvoyal, Ponneri before joining Pulicat Lake. The place where we had bath, water is very clean with little bit of salty taste because it is closer to Pulicat Lake.

As we went forward we found many birds flying in air, it was a nice view.; We watched few birds with the help of NIKON 10x50 binoculars of Kumar ji. They were Painted Storks.

When we were 2KM away from Pulicat village

Hmm; finally we reached there and had our lunch, then we had a nice Arun Ice cream :); Now we saw few birds and took pics of them on the Pulicat bridge;

from there we reached to Beach and we all had few pics with anands Road Bike in beach, then me, praneeth, Ram and Avais had a dip in beach.;

Here comes chance to introduce all 6 of us with their names...

Anand..

Karteesh..

Ram..

Kumar...

Praneeth...

and Avais..

This group photo is took by the Kids of that village :);

I seem different in the pic :-p but i am having shhhh !!!

The smile at below pic is because of that :-)

These are not small kids they are JADU :P; they revealed us the secrets of island :-pp. They really given us guidance for the stay :-))

and then we rested under the Boat, even though its a small nap we are much refreshed.;

From there for night stay we planned to sleep in a island,; Played with kids on the way;

Sunset at pulicat;

But we rested at a place beside the beach as it is getting darker. Me, Praneeth and Kumar have set-up the camp and collected the sticks for campfire. Meanwhile Ram, Anandh and Avais went to village to bring things for dinner; before they come back, we are capturing the sunset scenery.

Our cycle parked for night at

We had bread, biscuits and banana for the night. Anand helped us with out wasting the food :P :P; Now we went to beach and spent some time.Its really amazing to breeze on the seabed and watching the stars in the Moon light.Wow; Kumar ji explained about stars for some time and slowly we went to bed for that day.;

Pic of moon by kumar ji;

Our camp site was at 13° 26' 15" N 80° 19' 35" E (Geo coordinates were taken from our GPS instrument). Bay of Bengal on the East and Pulicate Lake on the Were were only 150 meters away on either side of our camp site.

Anand, you really seem to us the Pi of Pulicat, the way you have carried 20 Liters of water can on your shoulders for around 1.5 kms on the beach sand is amazing and it was very useful resource for the that night and next day morning activities :-p

Sorry Anand, for missing the campfire on seashore as per your wish, we will definitely have it in our next trip ;)

Actually night I was telling Praneeth, while returning I wanna go by train because of fear that I may not be able to ride, he gave me confidence that we all can go together (Thanks for supporting me Praneeth and others too :) )

We were very much tired, we didn't woke up next day morning till 7.00Am I guess . But Praneeth and Kumar ji woke up early morning to see sunrise, they took few pics too.

and Praneeth lit the campfire. Rest all are sleeping at that time :P

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Actually we planned to go 7 KM south side as there was some temple, but as Avais wanna go early we couldn't go there. In the morning we had some more bread and biscuits that are left that night.

We planned to start our ride, all bikes got punctured except my bike and Praneeth, so all their eyes are o our bikes mostly Ram :P . As per wish we found Praneeth bike got punctured, we fixed it with lot of struggle because its very small hole couldn't even find with our eye. we found it using water.

We walked long on the seashore to reach the place where the car is parked.This is also very tough part.

Inline image 63

We finally reached car and started our ride, when we came across the flowing river / canal we had a dip in that river that is really refreshing for us.

Till Minjur we rode our bikes calmly, there we had lunch @ New Vasanth Vhavan. Food is good. After having lunch i got good energy and went fast for some distance again i joined the gang.

I Forgot to tell you one thing, me and Praneeth really got impressed that Kumar ji is pedaling whole ride non-stop without any difficulty.

After we entered Chennai we lost the root entered Washerman Pet
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I guess Avais got bored in the trip to ride car slowly along with us. Thanks a lot dude if your car is not there we would have struggled a lot.

Special thanks to Kumar ji for excellent pics and organizing this trip (My first trip :P)