Bliss in the Hills is a little-known 1200 brevet, which is possibly the toughest ride in all of India, and possibly ranks very high in the list of some of the hardest rides in the world. Now, when I call this little-known, I might offend many fans of the ride, many of whom have attempted this ride more than once, but I call it so, because it's only known to a bunch of people who regularly follow traffic on a mailing list, and probably a few others, who may have heard about it, from these regulars. I got to know about this ride when I saw ride reports and periodic updates, last year, and it had captured my imagination. I'd thought right then that this was a ride I'd attempt, if I got the opportunity. When I heard about this year's edition, I decided to time my India visit (which I'd originally planned for late December) so that I'd be able to do this ride, and quickly decided to sign up. Though I didn't finish the ride (I retired after logging in 509 km), the little that I saw made me realize that this was a brilliant ride, which deserves way more attention and reach than what it gets currently.

My Bliss story starts even before I started the ride. Having signed up, I was extremely nervous about riding conditions and weather conditions in India. Having been used to riding in sub 15°C conditions where I often drank a bottle of water in two or more hours of riding, I was indeed apprehensive. I knew a few of the riders signed up to do Bliss, from either Facebook or the Bangalore Bikers Club mailing list. These riders were Putta Narasimhaiah, Ashok Thiruvengadam, Mohammad Rafi, Archana Sheshagiri, Mohan Subramanyam,and Sayi Rama Krishna. I created a messaging group on Facebook, with some of them and pinged them about my concerns. I was also added to the official Bliss riders whatsapp group, which saw some activity. After initially toying around with the idea of doing the ride on a borrowed bike, and later, of buying a used bike in India, I decided not to take any chances, considering that this was such a long ride. I decided instead, to take my tried, tested and trusted roadbike from Sweden, though it would involve a steep fee with my airline. I booked my flight tickets, ordered the bike bag booking and counted out the days to the start. During this time, I was also supposed to complete a wheelbuild around a dynamo hub, which would ensure that I could have energy for my lights and USB powered devices, during the ride, but various factors meant that I was unable to finish the build in time. I merely managed to lace the wheel, but never completed truing it. I also didn't install the special headset with the USB power adapter etc. This would come back to bite me later. I went over to BOTS to get some last minute TLC for my bike, and got it too, thanks to Archana Sheshagiri, who ensured that my bike wouldn't choke dead on me, during the ride. Thanks, Archana, and BOTS!

As the days closed in, I was getting more and more apprehensive, but things got better when I told myself that I'd give it my best, and not cross a line where my safety and well-being were involved. There would be no shame in not finishing this ride, but I'd do all that I could, to end up as a finisher.

October 5th, 2016. 1400 hrs: Satish Addanki arrived, and picked me up from close to my parents' house, and we drove to the start point near Central Silk Board, in his car. After a couple of minutes of searching, we found the riders, organizers, volunteers and other well-wishers clustered around. The energy and enthusiasm was in the air. I met many people I'd only interacted with online, such as Sohan Sintre, Thoudam Opendro Singh, and Manjula Sridhar, for the first time.

My heavily loaded beast of burden, with frame bag, handle bag, Garmin Edge 500 for in-ride metrics, and Garmin GPSMap64T for navigation. The rear wheel was built by me, and I'm proud to say that my wheel build survived over 500 km of the brutal Bliss test!

With Putta Narasimhaiah, L, and Chidambaran Subramanyan aka Chiddu, R.

The riders listen while Chiddu briefs us. Manjula Sridhar and Satish Addanki listen in too.

With Thoudam Opendro Singh aka Open

It took a while for the briefing to finish. Chiddu mentioned that one of the control points had more time than what was on the card, and that there was going to be an additional ten minutes on top of all the deadlines, to accommodate for the late start. Wishes were exchanged, cheers were raised and off we rolled, through crowded Bangalore roads.  The opening stretch going through ultra high density traffic, in the middle of polluting vehicles was a sea change from the tranquil riding conditions in Sweden, and came as quite a reality check, but I hung on. When I pulled alongside Ashok, he laughed and enquired how I was coping, and reassured me that we'd leave the traffic within about 30 km. I did the mental math and figured that it'd take well over an hour, and possibly close to two, before I could be out of the city, and quickly settled in for the ride. Since there were many riders in close formation, I didn't have to bother about checking the GPS within the city, and that truly was a good thing. Riding with cleated shoes was bad enough in the stop and go traffic, and having to check the GPS would have only made matters harder. After some time, as I started to ride towards Nelamangala, I'd managed to get into my long-ride rhythm. I've never listened to music on any of my brevet rides, and this was no different. While the traffic noise was jarring, I was able to tune it out, and enter my own personal zen-mode, in which I hear nothing but the sounds of my tires on tarmac/gravel and the whizz of the chain. It was at this time that Somaskanda rode alongside, with a cheery 'Hello'. We exchanged pleasantries and introductions and started to ride together, a partnership that would last all the way to the point where I'd retire. Soma was probably the youngest rider doing the bliss ride, at all of 22. He was cheerful, enthusiastic and strong, and together, we started riding at a brisk clip. After a while, we passed Shun and Jins, who'd stopped to fix a puncture. After some more time, we caught up, first with Putta, and some time later, with Arvind.  We made a brief stop to top up water bottles, switch on our lights and wear our high visibility jackets, and continued our ride towards Belur. At around 95 km, Putta elected that we stop for dinner, and we stopped and fueled up on some excellent vegetable fried rice.  We saw Ashok pass us while we were stopped.

After we resumed riding, going was a bit sluggish, as we'd all had heavy meals. Putta in particular seemed to be slowing down a bit, and seemed to be in need of some sleep.  After a while of slowing down and speeding up again, during which we discovered we'd dropped Putta and Arvind again, Soma and I decided to ride on.  We stopped for a pee break, and that's where the first of the disasters struck; Soma leaned our bikes against each other, while he peed and I got out of my T-shirt, as I was feeling too warm. The bikes however, didn't stay up, and clattered down in a heap. In my attempt to pick it up, I must have pulled on the rear bottle cage, which snapped off. Since throwing away a bottle was pretty much out of the question, I had to repack my saddle bag, to make room for the bottle. Using a cable tie, I secured a bottle containing a dry T-shirt and pair of socks, in the place of the broken bottle cage, and used the space freed up in the saddle bag, to accommodate my water bottle. While we were doing all of this fixing, Arvind and Putta crossed us, but we motioned them to keep going. We fixed up and resumed riding. After a while though, I got briefly distracted, and while flying along at close to 40 kmph, I hit a rock which resulted in an instant pinch flat, and so, we lost even more time, fixing the flat. When we moved again, we saw that Putta and Arvind had stopped to grab a power nap. We chose to ride on to Belur. As we closed in on Belur, we passed through some stretches of road which were in very poor shape, and to make matters worse, there were high speed descending and some short but steep climbs there. Here, a good, strong, well directed and focused light was the need of the hour, and unfortunately, I was ill equipped in this department. As I've mentioned earlier, my original plan was to have a dynamo hub and fork mounted lights, but when the wheelbuild didn't complete on time,  I realized that I'd have to make do with regular lights. Apart from the most excellent Bontrager Ion 700 that only lasts between 5-7 hours, I'd invested in a Cateye Volt300. Now, the Cateye is an excellent light, but unlike the Bontrager, the mount is not adjustible, as it it is designed only for use on the handlebar. Since I had a big handlebar bag blocking the path of the light, I had to mount mine on the drops, and since I couldn't adjust the angle of the mount, I had to physically clamp the light high up the drop, quite close to the brakes, in order to get a decently angled beam of light. In order to be able to still brake without obstruction, I had to settle for a compromise, which meant that the bright beam of light was a bit too high; I couldn't quite see potholes closer to me. This meant that I had to totally rely on Soma to lead me, and he had to constantly yell out warnings in the dark, to ensure that I didn't plow right into a pothole or a rock.  This meant that we had to drop our pace a bit more than we'd have liked to. With better lights, I could have easily gone faster, and Soma clearly had the legs to go faster in that stretch; we could have saved a big chunk of time.

We reached the control point around 3 am, took ATM slips and decided to take a powernap at the petrol bunk across the street. We slept for 30 minutes and were happy to discover the that petrol bunk not only had an unlocked toilet, but also a clean one! As I was waiting for Soma to finish up, I saw a couple of other riders going past. We resumed riding, and after a while, stopped to eat a sandwich each before continuing. After a while, we pulled into a chai tapri (all night tea stall) where we each had three cups of really tasty hot tea, and a few locally made dough biscuits. We also saw Jins and Shun there. We continued riding at a brisk pace and didn't stop anywhere. My mid morning, we caught up and passed Shun and Jins, and later Kavi. We realized that Soma and I were now leading the rider pack. We made good time, and were egged on by the spectacularly beautiful countryside, including the coffee plantations we rode alongside.

Yes, there were spectacular sights along the ride.

We were the first to make it to Madikeri control, and within five minutes, Kavi pulled in. We had an icecream and some milk to cool off, and rode on to Siddhapura, where we took selfies. Kavi, Soma and I decided to eat at a local hotel and as we were eating, we were joined by Shun, Jins and Elango. At this point, I was beginning to feel quite feverish due to the heat; I should have stopped at a drugstore to buy some crocin, but I made the imprudent decision to continue on, as I felt it was a waste of time and that I could buy medicine later. Big mistake.  Continuing for a while, I began to feel sapped by the heat. Now, Soma had had an issue with his saddle height, which had given him a lot of back pain, and I had had to give him lots of motivation to keep going. I'd been pushing him and in the process pushing myself, but this heat exhaustion was draining me. I gave in to the temptation and mentioned to Soma that I was planning to take a power nap; this was clearly a blunder, in hindsight. Both Soma and I stopped, and minutes ticked by. I'd only wanted to stop for 10-15 minutes, but as time rolled on, I was feeling more and more disconsolate. After about 45 minutes had rolled by, I saw Ashok, Putta, Arvind and somebody else pass by. Both Soma and I were suddenly enthused to get back on the road and catch them. We quickly got back into our discarded jerseys, mounted our bikes and started a hot pursuit. My heart rate was into the red, but I was in no mood to ease off. We kept pushing on, and before long, we caught up our friends, but they seemed to be strangely sapped. I know we'd been well rested after our 45 minute nap, but our friends seemed to have suffered a lot. Putta was probably tired on his 650 B iron horse, but I was surprised that Ashok wasn't faster. Soma and I had planned to team up with them and offer our services in pulling at the front, and in turn getting our opportunity to get pulled, but they were clearly off pace. We had no option but to again head off on our own.

We shot past Virajpet and then got into the long downhill section before Iritty. Now, my descending skills were practically non-existent, but I'd got a couple of good tips from my friend Sharath MS, when I'd done some riding with him in California. I used those tips, and followed Soma's line. Soma was clearly much more experienced, and he was riding well within his own limits, in order to accommodate me.  I made a couple of rookie mistakes, including badly understeering on a sharp bend, which put me smack in the path of an oncoming truck. I hit my brakes and my rear wheel skidded heavily. I've never been in a situation like that on my bicycle, but I had had plenty of experience riding a very skittish motorcycle when I lived and worked in Pune. I had a lot of experience handling skids and even using it to my benefit, and that experience came in very handy, and probably saved my life here. I locked the brake long enough to get the bike to skid into an angle I wanted and then let go and pumped hard, allowing me to quickly jag back to the left side, and out of the path of the oncoming truck. There was a car driving just a few meters behind me, and he/she must have almost had a heart attack, seeing my narrow escape. The car driver was thankfully not an asshole; he/she continued to stay behind me, and not rush into passing me. Soma was blissfully unaware of my narrow shave, and kept rolling ahead and I quickly regained my composure, and speed and caught up with him. When comfortable, I waved the car ahead and pulled over to the side, letting a rather relieved car driver pass by.  After the car passed, the descent ended and I rode alongside Soma and briefly updated him about my adventures and skidding.

As we were continuing, I felt my bike beginning to fishtail on turns. I asked Soma if I'd had a flat, but it didn't seem like it. We continued a bit more, and it got worse. We stopped, and sure enough, it was a slow puncture. When we checked the tires, we found glass shards, which Soma helped to remove. Soma found that his tire too had shards in it, so he wisely changed both the tire and the tube, but as I didn't have a spare tire, I had to change the tube and hope for the best. While we were fixing our bikes,  Putta and Arvind passed us, and after a further twenty minutes or so, Ashok went past too.  This was a bitter blow, because we'd recovered so well, only to lose all the time we'd gained. Having fixed the flats, we rode hard and made it to Iritty control, where Ashok and a couple of others were still around. We decided to grab a quick bite at a local bakery and move on, but as I tried to move, I realized my rear tire was flat again. An inspection showed that this was not glass shards that we'd missed earlier, but some metal pieces. I must have got it when I hit a few potholes due to being unable to spot them in time. I was clearly lacking experience in checking for foreign objects in the tire, and couldn't have managed at all, without Soma's help. This however meant that I'd used up the last of my three spare inner tubes. Another flat would now mean end of the ride, as Soma didn't have any spares either. We again started moving.  Soma knew that the infamous Boy's Town stretch was ahead of us, and we were riding as hard as we could, to make up for all the lost time. I was finding it extremely hard to spot the potholes in the road, and was praying to all gods I knew, to spare me from a ride ending puncture. To make matters worse, Soma's tail light had a loose contact and from time to time, would completely go dark. To compound matters, oncoming motorists were absolute assholes, failing to dip their lights as they passed us. Each time it happened, I'd go completely blind and would go into a panic attack as I didn't know if my ride would be over in the next ten meters or thirty. A local bus driver overtook me aggressively, passing within inches of me, only to pull in front of me and stop at the bus stop, causing me to take evasive action and skid off the road. I thought I'd lost Soma there, but after some hard riding, I saw a distant twinkling taillight and was able to meet him again. If our dwindling time was not problem enough, I was now in desperate need of a restroom. As we shot past a gas station, I told Soma that we'd have to go back for me to use it. After my break, we resumed and before long, we hit the infamous Boy's town climb. I've seen some people call it a 6km climb, and others calling it 9km. In any case, the first three must have been rolling, and we made short work of it.  The next three kilometers was another matter, however; Soma dismounted and walked it up, while I labored on and rode up the hill, at a very, very, low speed.  At the end of 3 km or so, there was a short flat stretch, before the climb steepened again. I stopped there and waited and after a while, Soma arrived there. He told me that we'd take the same time whether we biked or walked, and that it probably saved energy to walk. Saying this, he continued walking the bike. I however, had to stop and get my cleat covers over my LOOK style cleats. As I was doing this, I lost sight of Soma, just around the bend. This was psychologically a big morale crusher. I shouted out to Soma, but he was out of earshot. I was also overheated, having ridden up the previous 6 km. I tried to push the bike up, but walking up with those cleats seemed too insanely hard.

After more than 500 km of riding, the prospect of pushing the bike up an extremely steep gradient was mentally crushing. I tried walking a few meters, but my feet were killing me. With no partner, I was now totally alone, exhausted by the humidity and thoroughly demoralized. As I was pushing uphill, I saw my speed. It said 5kmph. I realized that I had about two hours to make it to Kalpetta, but I'd need at least 45 minutes to push the damn bike uphill, with my cleats, and after that, my extremely accurate GPS showed me that I had to ride 40 km in maybe an hour and fifteen minutes, in order to make it to the Kalpetta control. At that point, I knew I was out of the race.  With my poorly aimed light and the quality of roads, there was no way I could average over 30 kmph, even if it was all descents.  The fact that I had no more spare tubes, or for that matter, time to fix a flat, should I get another one, was not encouraging at all. I got to a point where the grade suddenly increased to 20%, and stopped. I was done. I called Chiddu, and mentioned my predicament. I told him I was exhausted by the heat and humidity, and was unable to walk uphill with my bike. Could he come and rescue me? He mentioned that he'd be busy till the control closed, and after that, he'd need some time to rest, as he was extremely exhausted himself. He told me that I'd be several hours before he could drive, to pick me up. I told him that it was fine, and I'd try to ride back to the foot of the climb, where there was a church where I could hole up for a few hours. Since I'd communicated my intentions on the whatsapp group, many were trying to talk me out of my decision. Rafi, in particular, did everything he could, to get me to continue, and he almost succeeded too. I decided to make another effort. Since walking up would be too slow, I tried again to mount the bike and ride up slowly, but I simply failed to engage the left cleat, and almost fell off the bike, into the path of a truck descending the hill at a high speed. I then realized that I was now putting my life and well-being at danger, and this was not what I wanted. Clearly, I had not thought that I'd need to walk uphill for over 3km, pushing my bike along.  There was no way I could do that, with my cleated shoes. Since then, others have mentioned that I could have removed my shoes and tried, but there was no place to put the shoes, nor did it occur to me.. and my mind was simply not working, due to heat exhaustion.  Many riders now have very strong opinions about this climb, and so do I.  A bike ride where one is expected to get down and walk for several kilometers doesn't seem like a good idea at all. People like Opendro mention that it's technically possible to climb it, and I agree, but it must be possible to quickly hop on and off the bike. Having assymetric cleats like the LOOK system, meant that this was never going to be possible. Had I known more about the nature of the Boy's Town climb before the ride, I'd definitely have ridden without the cleats, but that's hindsight.

Now that the race to the Kalpetta control was no longer on my mind, I now had to think about getting myself to safety. The place where I was standing was extremely dangerous; it was a very steep section, and at a bend. Trucks and cars were descending at high speeds and many were oversteering almost into me, before turning away. Since I could not go up, I decided to ride down, to the church at the foot of the climb. Unknown to me, after I'd fixed the last puncture, I'd failed lock my brakes back into position, and I later discovered that not one, but both of my brakes had remained in the unlocked position. When I tried grabbing the brakes, I realized I had no stopping power at all, but in the heat exhausted state that I was in, I failed to even check on the brake locks, or the position of the pads. I simply assumed that the grade was simply too steep for the brakes to work.  This meant that I was now in an extremely dangerous place, without the ability to either climb or descend.  It was check-mate.  As I was mulling my position, a police jeep went by, with flashing lights. I tried to call out to them, but they went away without stopping, but the sight of the police vehicle gave me an idea. I called 100, the police hotline, and spoke to the dispatcher. I mentioned that I was a bicyclist on an adventure ride, and that I'd suffered heat exhaustion and was currently in a very perilous position. If I could be taken to the top of the hill, I'd be able to manage myself. The dispatcher took my details and promised to have the local police call me back. After a 10 minute wait which seemed to me like an eternity, I got a call from the police from the local station. I had to repeat my story to them, and answer more questions, but at the end of another five minutes, they announced that they were going to drive up, to rescue me. A further fifteen minutes later, the police rolled up to me.  Since there was no room in their vehicle for my bike, a cop volunteered to ride/walk up with my bike, while I hitched a ride uphill, in the police vehicle. At this point, I also saw Sayi and Mohan climbing up. The police dropped me off at the top of the climb, waving off my profuse thanks with a smile and a simple 'We are Kerala Police. We are here to help' message. To say that those gentlemen in uniform impressed me with their dedication to serve, would be a huge understatement.

Having reached the top, I was reunited with my bike, and also joined by Sayi and Mohan, who decided they'd rest a while before continuing. I rested with them. At this point, though my ride was over, I wanted to finish the ride to Kalpetta as soon as possible, but Sayi seemed to be quite exhausted.  Both Sayi and Mohan were not only tired, but also on MTBs, which meant that I had to slow down a lot.  As we closed in on Kalpetta, when we were around 22 km away or so, there was a fork in the road; Mohan wanted to go straight on, but I insisted that the official GPS track went the other way; in the end, we chose to stick with the official course, but we were probably the only ones to go on that stretch, and Mohan mentioned that the other road was perhaps in a much better state, and I'm inclined to believe him. The stretch that we rode on was absolutely horrendous.  I was getting more and more depressed, the longer we continued riding. Sayi wanted another nap, and we stopped for a long time again. When we resumed, we were only doing about 12-15 kmph and had over 18 km to go. The prospect of riding at such a dreadfully low speed (or risk punctures, if you go any faster), and spending another hour on the saddle seemed too much to me. I told Mohan and Sayi, that they could continue. I called Chiddu, who by now was rested. He agreed to pick me up. I shared my coordinates over whatsapp, bade goodbye to Sayi and Mohan and settled in to wait for Chiddu. I left my flashers on, to stay safe and also help Chiddu to spot me. He arrived forty minutes later, and we drove back to Kalpetta, discussing the ride. I'd decided that I wasn't going to resume my ride (a poor decision, in hindsight), and asked if I could get a ride with Chiddu, back to Bangalore, the next day, and he mentioned that it was possible, so that was that. Upon reaching Kalpetta, I was too tired to even shower. I simply ate the fantastic food which was on offer, and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

I woke up around nine and saw people finishing packing up. I quickly packed up my stuff, hitched my bike to the bike rack, along with that of Sayi's, as he'd decided to go to Bangalore in Chiddu's car too. After securing the bikes, Chiddu, Ravindra, Sayi and I headed off to Bangalore, hoping to make it by late evening, but we were certainly not done with our adventures. Kavi called Chiddu with news that he'd been sideswiped by a car; he was okay, but his rear mech was done for.  He was enquiring about the possibility of getting a different bike to ride. At this point, Kandappa had also communicated to Ravindra that a replacement bike could be arranged for Kavi, but only if he could make it to the next control point.  Kavi didn't have a chain tool, but that's something I always carry.  Chiddu asked if I could single-speed Kavi's bike; I could, I said, so off we went towards Ooty, to fix Kavi's bike. We passed at least three groups of wild elephants on the road.

Wild Elephant mom and child, browsing by the roadside.

We fixed his bike and saw him off. It was extremely satisfying to know that we could do something that ensured a fellow biker stayed on the road, and our happiness was multiplied several-fold, when Kavi went on to end up being one of the four finishers of this gruelling ride. Kavi rides off towards Ooty, after a pitstop to convert his bike to a single-speed.We reached Bangalore late into the night, without further incident, talking about how Bliss is a fantastic ride, and how it ought to get more publicity and attention, and how that attention could be used, to perhaps lobby for better roads etc. The idea is to get publicity for Bliss such that bodies such as Ministry of Tourism in Kerala etc take note. They could then be lobbied for better quality of roads etc. It could be a win-win situation, as bikers get safer riding conditions and Kerala government gets to take the credit for hosting the Kerala section of the most prestigious brevet ride in the country. With some luck and targetted marketing, similar efforts could be done with Karnataka and TN governments. All this is simply conjecture, but something definitely worth working upon, I feel.

The all-conquering quartet: L-R: Kaviarasu Rajappan, Jins Paul, Shun Athi, and Chandru Elango.

Lessons I learned from this ride.

1. Great lights are a must. Dynamo hubs are probably the best idea, as they'd guarantee that we won't run out of batteries/charge etc.
2. Tire liners and wider tires. They'd significantly increase ride comfort and reduce risks of punctures, thereby leading to potential time saving.
3. No cleats. Whether Boy's Town climb is retained for future editions or not, I think I'm not going to use cleats for any brevets in India. It's a pain in the ass in stop and go traffic, and when you are expected to get up and walk, it's an absolute no-no.
4. Crocin/Aspirin must on the rides. Also towels that one can soak in water and wrap around neck/head, to combat heat. It would have kept me going longer, for sure.