A 733 km cycling adventure in 9 days from Mangalore to Kanyakumari

The plan was primarily to hug the coastline as much as possible and stay off the national highway as much as possible.

BHPian ninjatalli recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Prologue:

Ever since I completed the Mangalore – Goa cycling ride, the itch was always there to get the Mangalore – Kerala trip done at the earliest. Back in June itself, I zeroed down to the holidays of December (year-end break) as the time to do this trip. Passed the message around to fellow cyclists (on and off the forum), but could get only one person interested. A few others who showed interest got disinterested when they heard my travel to the starting and ending points was going to be via a train, with the cycle being loaded as luggage on the train. I was extremely comfortable with carrying the cycle on the train but others, unfortunately, weren’t.

The lone friend who was interested however wanted to do a shorter version, till Kochi. And he whipped up enough interest in this trip across his cycling friends and a plan started emerging from their side, with them accompanying me till Kochi while I went the whole end till Kanyakumari. Things were looking good at this point.

Then other reasons caused me to change the dates to early December – primarily work-related, but also the fact that end of December, Kerala would be choked up with…