After a heavy breakfast, we gear up, test the intercom etc & start out at 8:00am.

The roads upto the town of Nileshwar were pretty bad in most stretches, but after that it got a shade better. From Kasaragod onwards for most part of our ride in Kerala we come across endless groups of devotees heading in a very orderly manner by every means- foot, bicycles, car, motorbikes, buses etc towards Shabarimala shrine for their annual pilgrimage in their black/orange ropes. Back to the trip, for the ride in the state of Kerala, I was forewarned by many friends, relatives & bikers about the maniac govt & private bus drivers (the local versions of Schumacher, Alonzo, Hamilton etc!!) who rarely had concern for anything on the roads. So I had prepared myself to make sure we don’t get into their path & end up as their windshield wiper. But what followed on the whole tip was something I never expected. I don’t know if it was the intimidating size of my bike with its side cases etc and an equally prominent retina scorching headlight that’s on all the time, almost all the oncoming buses normally made way for me and never drove me off the road in ‘Gods own country’.

Me & wife always enjoy Ice creams in Gods Own Country. The hot selling local flavors go by names like- Sharjah Shake, Gadbad, Falooda etc and hence we had a brief stop for some these at Payyannur.

Being a lil warm day, it was a nice break and we continue on. We pass Payyannur, Talliparamba and with some congestions at railway crossings and few road work stretches we make it for lunch at Kannur city.









Also being a Friday, I was able to make it for friday prayers at a mosque opp the restaurant. While having lunch I get a pleasant surprise. It’s a call from the local TV channel Indiavision TV asking if they could meet us for a small shoot & interview at Calicut city that evening. Sure, we do, we do…. (Afterall we have never been on TV so why miss the chance!) After a nice meal with traditional Kerala veggies & fish fry(the variety is huge), we make our way in fairly thick traffic out of Kannur, but sadly we missed taking a detour to ride alongside the sea at the 4km long drive-thru Muzhapilangad beach (I drove there a few days later by car and it was a unique experience riding on hard sand almost touching the sea). Anybody passing this way, should not miss doing it. It’s a nice experience. From here on it was a mix of good roads, heavy traffic, occasional light traffic, crazy traffic…. thru Tellichery, Mahe(which is still part of old French colony of Pondicherry),

We continue ahead passing Badagara, Quilandi & finally into Calicut city where we land at my mother’s seafront apartment on the beach road.

We soon wash up & climb up the 10 floors of the apartment complex to get some stunning views of the calicut beach & city.

A while later as we sit in the balcony to enjoy the view of the waves on the Arabian sea, the Indiavision TV crew arrive. Soon we get back into our gear, finish a brief interview and do a few runs on the beach road & other nearby roads with their camera crew following in a car. By then a reasonable crowd had gathered at the entrance of my mother’s apartment complex. It was repeatedly shown on their program ‘Kaleidoscope’ over the next week. The commentary is in the local language of Kerala State, which is Malayalam and sorry there are no sub-titles……



Finished the TV shoot and then headed to a local auto electrical shop which was arranged by Hella India to install a pair of FF50 fog/running lights. With the complicated Canbus electrical system on the BMW, the smart technicians there still managed to install the lights in a jiffy without breaking much sweat. The Hella FF50 with its oval shape blends well with the shape of the GS headlamp assembly and I think the size also is ideal. After fitting them, I put them on and new Hella beams light up the road like daylight. Anyway, over a nice home made dinner, my mom had a lot of advice for her youngest son (rather the wild one!) on riding slowly and keeping to the extreme left side of the road and give way to buses…finally a lil agitated she asks– if you love traveling so much why didn’t you use the car. I wanted to tell her things like ‘Mom, four wheels move the body, but two wheels move the soul’ but decided to keep quite lest I get a good knock on my head!! Finished dinner and retired to bed.