If you read the Part 1, you know that my Ducati had a breakdown and I needed to ride it back to Pune. This is the part 2 or lets say a detour of the South India ride for me.
Now that my bike was fixed, I needed to get it back to Pune from Kochi. I decided to take a different route than what Google usually suggests. I took the Kottayam - Kochi - Wayanad - Coorg - Mangalore - Udupi - Bhatkal - Murudeshwar - Hubli - Pune route.
I knew I could not do it all in 1 day, so I had decided to Halt at Bhatkal (Kind of midway). Started from Kottayam at 6am, covered 700 odd km and reached Bhatkal at 9PM. The roads were good but narrow and mainly through small towns.
So overtaking was not an option, and day time traffic led to slow speeds. No Vodafone/Idea network in Wayand-Coorg- Mangalore section of the route meant stopping now and then asking for directions. Highway construction on NH 75 caused even more headache.
By the time I reached the coastal section of the route, it was already dark. It was only after I rejoined the NH66 close to Mangalore could I gain some speed to make up for the lost time. Rested my bum on a hotel bed for around 9 hours, and then started for Pune the next day at 6:30am.
I had already done this part of the route on my Gokarna ride so I was aware of the route. And since the rotue was all Highways, I could gather some pace all throughout the ride. Reached pune around 4PM.
The best part of this long ride was that this was a completely solo long ride.
Some stats for this ride - Total Distance - 1360 km Total time (Door to door) - 33 hrs. Saddle time - 22.9 hrs. Avg speed - 62 kmph Avg fuel consumption - 15.2 kmpl.