Bike Ride to Khabeki Lake and Kanhatti

Here's another of my bike rides I undertook on Sunday 20th. The journey started at about 7:30am, five of us on three bikes, the destination was the Kanhatti garden in the famous Soun valley.

Both ways we did a total of about 150km ride. Following are the pics with the commentary.

Just as you are about to start climbing the hill, you pass through two gate-like pillars with a brief history of this passage:

The Kanhatti garden:



A natural spring in the garden:


Bikes in the parking lot:





Walking through the garden our way was blocked by this camel whose intentions did not seem too good so we changed our course:













We could see very small fish in this water but not big enough to be captured by the camera's eye:




The garden is pretty vast and rich with shady trees:


Here we enjoyed the cold water for some time:








Ready to head on your way to the Khabeki Lake:


Our rides:




The road:






The CD70 guys were too slow!!


Arrival at Khabeki Lake:


Old graves, I wonder if these are of the soldiers from the world war!


An old tree

Tolajjah: Ride to a place unseen..

THERE are historical places in our country that few people have seen or heard of. It is for the tourism department to develop these places and attract the public toward it. A few weeks back I heard of this place called Talojah situated in the famous Soun valley. On the top of a mountain there are relics of what might be a fort once. No one knows the history of Tolajjah. It is strange that even though the place is only about 50km from my city I ha never even heard if this place. 

No proper road leads to Talojah. There is an off-road (jeep track) of about 8km from Sakaisar road to Darbar Baba Kachi Wala that is for the trucks to approach the mines in that area. From the shrine you have to climb two hills to get to Tolajah. With some stops and some detours we reached there after a walk of about an hour and fifteen minutes.

The Tolajah ruins was an amazing site. The location completely reveals that it was been built keeping in mind the defence point of view. The approach to the hill top is only from one side and on the other sides end up several feet down the hill. Some of our excitement was marred by the fact that because of heavy Monsoon rains many wild bushes had grown there which didn’t allow us to see the whole place. The ruins are scattered at an area of about one and a half square mile. From the very looks of the place it becomes clear that the ruins are of some fort that might be populated several hundred years B.C. Today, there is no roof top here and because of earthquakes many walls have also been demolished but the traces of a fort remain till day.

It was a ride to a place seen by few humans. Pure adventure, Nat Geo hasn't got here yet. Surprisingly, the place is only 50km away from my town but I had never even heard of it. Two weeks back when a friend mentioned about it, I got so curious and decided to visit the place soon enough.

There is no proper approach to this place. No one knows the history of this place. As people say, the place might have population several years B.C. I have also heard that people have made their fortunes by digging gold objects from here.

Were were four together on two bikes. I was on my 125 for the ride as part of the journey was off-road. It was my first time for a ride on the mountains and also for off-road. Here are some of the pics.

I did almost a distance of 10km off-road, I really wished I had a dirt bike for this journey as the off-road track was a real test of your riding skill and of course he bike. I am glad we made it together.

This is a bit better part of the off road section. The whole journey was done in first gear and some heights were so steep that I had to tell me brother to get off the bike. A little throttle would mean the front end in the air.

There was this cold spring of water

We parked our bikes in the valley and our next journey was to be done on feet.

Some more pics.

Notice the cutting and arrangement of the rocks.

There were these bones of some animal. No, these are not from the B.C. times. Though I wonder how an animal this big should be able o get here.

The place must have been built keeping in mind the defence point of view. There was only one place to approach the hill top and the rest of the sides were like this:

Perhaps a good place for the base jumpers:

Some of the rocks on the boundary wall had this bowl like shape dug in them:

Some of the rocks had been separated because of earth quakes, someone had placed this rock for a bridge:

Many rocks had these strange holes in them:

This is the second highest mountain in the Soun valley, we were right on the top of it: