Karnataka National Park Blitz

Compiled and posted to the blog on 28 July 2026 from old Instagram posts.

Just a couple of months after my precious bike, Rogue, was born, I planned a road trip for the winter break with its hero and mentor, Dusty. Arjun and I set off on 23rd December, with our two Gixxers, aiming to cover all five national parks of Karnataka in just 3 days!

Day 1: Bannerghatta & Bandipur

A relatively uneventful day to start with. We covered Bannerghatta in the morning and Bandipur in the afternoon, but were too late to reach Nagarhole: due to nighttime traffic closure, we were forced to stop somewhere across the state border in Wayanad for the night. We wanted to celebrate the successful first day with some fresh toddy, but made the unfortunate decision of getting “takeaway” in plastic bags. We reached our hotel room to realise the bag had been punctured and leaked inside my backpack.

Day 2: Nagarahole & Kudremukh

We enjoyed the cool winter morning riding through Nagarhole National Park.

Later, somewhere between Nagarhole and Heggadadevana Kote, we encountered one of my favourite roads in the entire trip. Healthy tarmac, no traffic and epic scenes all around. This is what we’re in it to win.

Much of the day was then spent in some kind of reverie through lovely country roads. An endless series of roads through the middle of nowhere, with a million corners one after another, and a few incidents of the PU sole of my shoes kissing the tarmac. Can’t imagine how beautiful it must have been in the monsoon. It was an absolute joy to ride… 😍

You just know the corners were sexy AF when your tyre be looking like this:

The previous day’s mishap snapped us out of our reverie in the late afternoon. But after rushing like crazy to Kudremukh thinking that there’s no entry after 6, we found out that you can enter any time. A sigh of relief followed by lots and lots of bajjis from a small shop near the entry checkpost.

And then it was 40–50 km riding inside thick forest with nothing but the sheer weight of pitch darkness surrounding us. There were 2 or 3 cars we saw in the entire time. Those 90 minutes were surreal, and a crazy amazing experience. Knowing about the numerous forms of life lurking unknown, and yet able to sense and see nothing but the familiar form of your trusted bike leading you through the darkness. Moreover, we didn’t have any good quality auxiliary lights. Just our plain old headlamps giving off a yellow beam that could hardly be termed illuminating. Such was the sheer mass of the night. Absolutely ethereal. After countless ghat sections, this was a welcome change. And one that I’ll never forget.

Although we were done with 4/5 national parks, we still had a lot of ground to cover. We decided to make a strong push towards Murdeshwara. With half an hour till midnight, we took a break to stretch our legs and celebrate this rather strange Christmas Eve.

We started looking for hotels as we approached Murdeshwara, but soon realised we were in the midst of some pilgrimage season. Hotel after hotel we tried turned as away as they were completely booked. We kept trying for an hour or so, but eventually gave up. We headed to Murdeshwara town where we saw that we were not at all alone in our predicament: the main roads in the town centre were lined with fellow pilgrims sleeping on the sidewalks and their corresponding taxis. We managed to find a gap somewhere and decided to embrace the ever-increasing oddity of this Christmas Eve. Our backpacks became pillows, valuables went into pockets, and we ended up having a short night’s sleep that was half-decent.

Day 3: Anshi & mad dash back

Final day with 800+ km to go. Anshi remaining. We started early at 0630, and headed straight from Murdeshwara to Karwar beach. At sunrise, we finally enjoyed the amazing sights of the Karnataka coast that we had actually breached the previous night under darkness. The roads were good as well.

We passed by Gokarna on the way, although I didn’t think much of it, then finally reached Karwar beach.

We then left the coast behind and returned to the Western Ghats, ticking off the fifth and final national park on our list!

What an amazing and breathtaking stretch Anshi (Kali) was! I wished I could get more.

Then, an absurd quest to find a remote spot that Arjun had seen and fallen in love with a couple years prior. With no mobile network and no concrete description of the place, Arjun used his imperfect Kannada to gather some intel from the locals in Joida village. With that and pure instinct, we set off through off-road trails running through the local forests, for what seemed like an eternity. The 500 km separating us from Bangalore kept pressing on our minds, but Arjun was absolutely determined to find the spot again.

Two hours and 20 km of pure off-road trails, with many about-turns, eventually led us to this spot. Our beasts stood proud under the bright sun around 14:30, with beautiful(!) Chromalaena odorata bushes on either side, a sight to behold. Arjun already knew we had done it, although this was merely the gateway.

And, finally… A desolate landscape with terns courting and flying above us, hundreds and thousands of odonate exoskeletons on dried up stems around us, a flameback calling from behind us, and of course the hundreds of egrets fishing in front of us.

We had finally found it. That feeling of satisfaction and happiness was unmatched.

And, alas, it was time to pack it up.

NH7 from Dharwad to Bangalore was brilliant but very dangerous at the same time. It has two kinds of roads one after another. One is very good tarmac with lane divisions, reflectors and all. Very smooth. The second one is bad tarmac with raised and lowered parts here and there, no lane divisions, no reflectors. This is very dangerous as you’ll be going at a high speed on the former and suddenly it changes to the latter. You can’t even see well enough sometimes cos of the high beams from the opposite lane.

Anyways, it was an amazing stretch where we were constantly doing 100+ kmph. Lorries and buses were in plenty, having replaced the diurnal passenger traffic. I lost my wallet on this stretch somewhere after Davangere, between two refuelling stops -.- learnt my lesson.

We finally got back home at 4am on 26th, technically the fourth day of the trip. And then, of course, slept like a baby!