I was on my way to Nagapattinam from Thanjavur the previous night and had to stop at Thiruvarur owing to some intermittent heavy showers and the fact that it was dark. (Read post here). Today would be the last day of the ride and I had to get back to Bangalore by night. But I wasn’t sure if I should ride to the coast (just 25 km to Nagapattinam on the coast!), ride north and possibly touching Pondicherry, then turn back home or, just take the shortest (well not really) route to Bangalore.
I had good distance to cover in little time, so I hesitantly decided that riding to the coast wouldn’t be worth it and it deserved an entire ride or two to explore. I started early in the morning, just before sunrise. I looked up the maps and plotted a route to Bangalore. I avoided going through Salem as I didn’t want to ride the shade free highways afternoon. So, I rode north parallel to the coast as long as I could and then turned towards Bangalore at Thiruvannamalai.
So, you must be wondering, “Garden of Tamil Nadu”!? Most of us have a picture of Tamil Nadu as the land where the sun shines unusually bright and the land is scorched by its heat. That may be true in the central part of the state, but the coastal plains south of Pondicherry and Chidambaram are as lush and green as you can imagine. Water is aplenty here, owing to the Kaveri river system and the double monsoon it gets. The Kaveri river splits in two to form the island of Srirangam and then fans out into multiple streams to form a delta system that is known as the Garden of Tamil Nadu. Although each of these streams get their own name, they are all distributaries of the Kaveri. A Cholan King, Karikala Chola, build a dam after the island of Srirangam to control the flow of water through these streams. That is considered as one of the oldest dams/water diversion systems in the world!
This was the route I took for the day. Look how green that corner on the left-bottom is! Zoom in and take a closer look.
It was cloudy and had rained all over the region the previous night. The road from Thiruvarur to Kumbakonam is never straight for more than half a kilometer and the curves were smooth to ride on. It was the perfect setting and I’d count this as one of the best rides I have done recently.
Paddy and sugarcane fields are a common sight. It was so wet that there were ducks being reared on what looked like paddy fields!
Sort of a northern border to the garden is the Kollidam river, a branch off from the Kaveri, but bigger than the other stream which continues to carry the original name. I am yet to wrap my head around it and I consider all of the branches in this delta as the Kaveri herself. The river is now very near to the end of its journey across the Deccan plateau. It has carried a lot of sand and dumped it on the banks. The river is barely flowing and the sand banks are together with the river a kilometer across!
The view from a long bridge just north of Kumbakonam.
The greenery faded only a little before coming back to its lushness as I neared two more rivers, the Vellar and the Manimuthar.
Further, the roads are good, with only patches of gravel, still the greenery is good enough to make the ride pleasant. It was almost mid-day when I reached Thiruvannamalai and took a break for brunch at a nice looking restaurant that caught my eye. Lots of foreigners were hanging around and I overheard them talking about a certain “Ashram”.
Misery strikes after Thiruvannamalai! Turns out, the road is under construction all the way from there to Krishnagiri. I did not know this before and kept wishing for the agony to end soon. At many places I couldn’t even tell if I was still on the road or drifted away! The sun and the dust made it worse. After a couple hours of endurance came Krishnagiri and a smooth ride back home.
To my surprise I had reached a couple hours earlier than expected as I hadn’t taken many breaks. That made me think if I could have touched the coast and then returned. 🙂
Thanks for reading all the way! Hope you enjoyed it.
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Shreyas Goes 