Emptying my phone..

Just emptied my phone's memory today, thought i'd share the pics in there. To any amateur photographers visiting this page, this is not an attempt to show off photography skills (which would be pathetic in this case) but more of a presentation of evidence for various things i'd done in the recent past.

Also, might not be posting here for an indefinite period while i work on a personal project of mine, which should soon be up and will be announced here. So i thought i'd post a few pictures to distract the usual faithful readers (1.85, annual) and buy some time away.. :)

The River we played hide and seek with on the Sooraj Asha Wedding Roadtrip..

Evidence that Pgt did come along on the roadtrip to Sooraj's wedding. :)

The Car! Ain't she gorgeous :)

Bangalore in the rains, through my office window, on a boring afternoon.

Bangalore after the rain, on the day of Sooraj and Asha's reception.. it was actually a double rainbow!

Avial at St Johns Hospital grounds.. amazing concert as usual, plus they 'covered' silsila :D

And finally, the highlight of last weekend.. my best friend George's dog, Bubbles. She's a boxer, and while boxers can look intimidating, she's too damn cute and does the best sad-puppy eyes. Extremely friendly and a useless watchdog, to boot. I taught her to dance (!), but george couldnt be bothered enough to take a pic.

A wedding + roadtrip, and some disappointment..

The wedding + roadtrip:

Two very good friends of mine, Sooraj and Asha just got married. I'd been pretty kicked about it since the time Sooraj called with the news that they're getting married, and had decided immediately that i was going no matter what. i'd been wanting to do a roadtrip on the bike as well, since it had been seven months since i did a serious long ride. this was the opportunity, and i guessed sooraj wouldnt mind since he's already set the bar with his delhi-kerala trip. Pgt agreed to ride pillion, since he'd been saying for a while that he wanted to come along on one of my trips. whether he'll come again for another one is a different matter, but go we did.

The plan was to head via coorg and hit the northern end of kerala at kasaragod, and then ride south on NH17 to kanhangad where sachin lives. From there on i would be without a pillion since the two of them would head to kannur by bus for the wedding, while i'd make it on the bike. Sooraj had arranged a resort for all of us to stay the night, and about 15 people from NID were already there to begin the festivities. The ride there was pretty uneventful except for a bit of rain once we crossed the kerala border. Coorg, as expected, was stunningly beautiful in the rains. it was glorious riding all the way to madikeri, with green rolling hills on either side and small sleepy towns punctuating the ride. the misty mountains on approach to madikeri made my day, as we shot through them covered in a light spray from the morning drizzle.

Once the roads took a sudden turn for the worse, we figured we had crossed the kerala border. the flurry of checkposts soon after confirmed it. we played hide and seek with a snaking river all the way to kasaragod, and then landed at sachins house for a sumptuous lunch cooked by his mom. the animal kingdom had taken quite a hit on their population to feed us that afternoon. i headed off immediately after lunch for kannur, and made a halt at payyannur where sooraj lived. Now, i have a constitution's worth of rules for myself when it comes to bike trips. These vary from the intensely pragmatic to the ridiculously arcane. and on each trip, i end up breaking at least three or four of my own rules. the rules i have regarding prior trip planning are usually always broken, but this time in addition to those, i broke a big rule that i had. 'Never ride to Kerala'. One reason was that most places i wanted to ride to in kerala would take me via my home town of cochin, where the risk of running into someone i know was a bit high. i couldnt ride home since my bike would be immediately impounded and my name would be deleted from the ration card. the second reason was that the traffic in kerala is insane. i take public transport as much as possible when i'm there, i dont quite think im enough of a maniac to survive driving there. plus, it'll add a few years to my age overnight.

so this time, that rule was broken, since i wouldnt be driving much in kerala, and kannur would mean that i dont have to go anyplace where there's a chance i'd run into someone i'd know. my pre-trip planning was sloppier than usual, and i neither had a toolkit nor any spares. i got sloppy on that count because the bike had never given up on me on any trip so far. well, this time she did. at payyannur, the bike wouldnt start anymore. so the groom-to-be, his brother and their friend came to my rescue and eventually we managed to start her up. at this point, i decided to visit sooraj's house anyway, and catch the argentina-germany match there. the story of that is dealt with in the second part of this post.

overall, it was a fun wedding. it's always nice to see the couple happy, instead of looking grim (which ive seen quite a few times elsewhere, by the way). sooraj was grinning like an idiot, and asha had her sweet smile as always, and we the friends were rapidly switching between making bad jokes and eyeing the girls in the auditorium. it was nice to have caught up with some old friends, and it was nicer to have made some new friends. with the wedding out of the way, it was time to head home. the next day was an all india-bandh, and since that would mean no petrol pumps, i couldnt risk a ride. so, right after a nice wedding sadya, i started off for bangalore. and i wished i hadnt.

each trip is difficult in one way or another, but this one was something else. as i made my way up the winding mountain roads on the ghats, the sky grew ominously grey. i rode as fast as i dared, aiming to cover as much distance as possible before the rains hit. that may have been a disastrous decision, in retrospect, since i was smack in the middle of nowhere when it finally started raining. i was surrounded by thick forest, there was heavy fog in patches, the last sign of civilization was about fifteen kilometres ago, and the road still kept climbing higher. since there was no shelter of any sort, i decided to keep riding in the rain, climbing higher and higher on the twisting road, with all my lights switched on so the oncoming trucks would see me. it was about four in the afternoon, but seemed like six thirty. there were no signboards indicating the route to mysore, and i had no map with me. i couldnt have opened a map in that rain, in any case. after riding about half an hour, i got this gut feeling that i was lost. there was no traffic now, only me riding around on a narrow twisting road flanked by forest on one side and coffee plants on the other. there was no place i could take refuge in or ask for directions, until i finally saw a shed in the coffee plantation, halfway up the mountain slope. I had to park on the road and walk halfway up the hill in pouring rain to find out from the guy there that i missed the mysore road a few kilometres back in the fog.

after turning back and finding the road, i took it all the way up the hills to reach the deccan plateau, and stopped for a chai. in what is becoming a tradition now, the five minutes i spent in the chai shop were the only minutes without rain. as soon as i hopped back on the bike, it was cats and dogs again, and i was cold, soaked and on the verge of giving up. i asked the shopkeeper about the roads ahead, whether they get better or worse. he told me that there's a bit of forest for twenty kilometers, apart from that it was ok. I was contemplating taking a room at the next town and riding the next day risking the bandh. At the very least, i wanted to sit it out till the rain subsided. I asked him how big the forest was, and he assured me that it's not a problem. somehow, i decided to press ahead, and that turned out to be a good decision. the small forest he mentioned was the fucking Rajiv Gandhi National Park, as i found out later. if i'd sat out the rain, i would most likely have run into the elephants there at night, given my luck.

after crossing the forest, i was back on familiar roads again. but there wasnt much sun or warmth, and the net result was that i was soaked all the way back to bangalore, and couldnt ride as fast as i wanted to since the wind was making me shiver. my shoes are still wet even as i write this, the day after the trip. i reached home at around nine in the night, with ample time to sleep since the next day was a bandh. and sleep i did, like a baby. if you dont count the snores, that is.

the disappointment :

the song goes, dont cry for me argentina. i damn near did. and im sure a lot of people in kerala did as well. i do not intend to turn this post into a discussion and dissection of their loss, since the reasons vary from the rational (lack of a decent defence) to the irrational (i wasn't wearing my lucky jersey that day). what i intend to do is focus on the madness that i witnessed.

at the outset, let me say that i am a huge football fan. i used to love playing the game since school, played pretty much in every game that happened in college, and still continue to play when i get the chance. i dont watch the game much on tv, but i still prefer watching football to any other sport. i own jerseys of argentina and my favourite clubs, spent a large chunk of my first ever stipend on a pair of (then)expensive football boots, and keep a football in office that i kick around when i'm bored. yet what i saw in kerala was quite something else.

in kerala, argentina and brazil have large numbers of fans. in a state not known for things like cut-outs of film stars and politicians, world cup footballers from literally the other side of the globe get huge cut-outs placed at road intersections by their supporters. and that was years ago, and that was something i'd come to expect. even in homes, there was a healthy amount of craze for the game. i remember my father waking me up to watch the match where roberto bagio missed the penalty. when i went for sooraj's wedding, the family there were all looking forward to watch the match, and i could see the expressions on at least some of their faces wanting the wedding eve visitors to leave quickly. sooraj included. he had made a bet that he would cut his ponytail if the germans won. i'm sad to report that in the end, he did.

so, given all this, i was unprepared for what i saw this time. when i went home the weekend before the wedding, i'd counted 400 argentina hoardings along the roadside from palakkad to thrissur, before i stopped counting. these were put up by local sports clubs, businessmen, groups of friends, even individuals. brazil had a sizable number as well, followed by lonely looking hoardings supporting germany, spain and the netherlands. i saw one each for england and portugal as well. shops had painted their shutters in the colours of their favourite national teams, i found out on a sunday. there were flags and other decorations hanging along every road and junction. during election times, back in the time when the rules regarding painting on walls was a bit more liberal, we used to see signs on walls saying 'Booked : CPI(M)' in anticipation of a coming election. I actually saw a big wall with 'Booked : Argentina Fans Association' on it, ostensibly in anticipation of an argentine victory. I know we're a football crazy population, but all of this seemed to me a little over the top. and in my list of irrational reasons for our loss, i added 'bad karma generated by an over-enthusiastic populace'.

let me explain that a bit. one of the boards said 'If the earth were a football, and the sky was the pitch, and the stars(of the astronomical variety) were the players, they would still be beaten by the brazilians in the final'. i doubt if coach Dunga would share the same assessment. heck i'm a die hard argentina fan yet even i had a feeling we would lose thanks to our rubbish defence. the text on quite a number of these hoardings were along similar lines. the day brazil lost, fans of every other team took out a rally together to gloat. brazil fans seem to be hated by a lot of people. of course, ten minutes after the argentine defeat, when i was on the road from payyannur to the resort sooraj had arranged for us, i saw brazil fans tearing down and burning argentina hoardings, and bursting crackers. a few friends who were behind me in a car,most of them brazil fans, were stopping and urging people to burn the argentina flags, and one guy they urged turned out to be a hapless argentina fan taking down his hoarding so no one would burn it. i was shouted at by one group that had congregated at a junction to tear down argentina hoardings for having committed the crime of riding past them with bright headlamps. it was mayhem, and i'm told i didnt see the worst of it that happened further inland from the highways.

i put the hoardings down to the fact that vinyl printing is much more accessible and cheaper now. anyone with a bit of extra cash kicking around can get one printed, and thanks to photoshop, they could be standing next to Messi wishing him the best. and a lot of people these days seem to be having just the right amount of extra cash kicking around. and any excuse to celebrate will do, i guess. i kinda had mixed thoughts about the whole thing. i was glad to see the love for the game, yet i was wondering if the whole rivalry and hoarding drama had gone a bit over the top, leaving the game in second place. i dont know, and dont see myself fit to judge, but i'll look forward to what happens in four years time.

Happy B'day, Rocinante :)

My bike turns four today. It's been a helluva ride, almost 50k kilometers. I'm proud of the fact that she's done more kms on long trips than on the office commute. She's my life and love, my pride and joy, blood sweat and tears and all the other cliches possible. I love that bike.

We've been through a lot together. I've had 28 accidents, for starters. I've been airborne and underwater(and how!) on it, both true stories by the way. Skin was scraped, bones were broken, money was spent on expensive and hard-to-get spares, yet the biking spirit endures. I've been to chennai 9 times, pondicherry and goa 4 times each, shivanasamudram twice and once each to sakleshpur, coorg, bombay pune and ahmedabad. And a hundred other places remain on my list.

I hope to do ladakh some day soon, maybe even another country, though that is a distant dream. If i could, i'd go around the world, in a heartbeat. I've done enough miles to cover the equatorial circumference of the earth, and i hope we eventually cover the equivalent of the distance to the moon. I wanna go to the north east on a wild goose chase to find the elusive sonam kazi. I want to chill with the delhi folks after a ride through rajasthan. I want to see pushkar, jaisalmer and bikaner, probably even make an offering at the biker baba shrine thereabouts.

But above all, I want to say its been a helluva ride. I've seen parts of this country in a way few other people have. I've had the most amazing experiences, hurtling through dusty villages on hot afternoons, racing downhill on the ghats against the sunset, scrambled to escape the clutches of a rainstorm, tasting roadside chai in unlikely places, tearing up and down the highways in what can only be called a pursuit of happiness. temporary and fleeting happiness that disappears when i get to work on monday, yes, but a very important happiness nonetheless. A happiness that helped me keep my head amongst a life varying between the mundane and the insane. And for that, i'm grateful i have this bike, a sport tourer extraordinaire. I'm as much in love with my bike today as i was on the day i bought it.

Someone was dead-on right when they said, "Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul"

PS- I secretly christened my bike rocinante a few months after id started touring, in honor of Don Quixotes faithful steed. My pursuits are quixotic after all :)

Also, pratheek sends his wishes :)

Lessons in Collaborative Volvo Repair..

So i've just completed the second of my three annual pilgrimages to morjim beach, goa. The trip itself was pretty unremarkable, since we didn't do anything out of the ordinary like we're wont to. In fact, we rented scooters and did the touristy stuff for a change, considering we've never done that before. Usually, these trips go in the order : set some kinda dubious speed record on the way there, spend time lazing at the beach, set another kinda dubious speed record on the way back. This time though, public transport was taken much to my chagrin, and the driving was left to the bus guys.

This brings me to an interesting fact that my friend vijai and i discovered while going over my numerous goa trips. Everytime I have taken a mode of transport other than my bike, there has been trouble. And this time the trouble was a volvo bus of the KSRTC that refused to start. We reached the bus station at Panjim at 6pm to catch this bus scheduled to leave at 7pm, and by about 6 30 it was evident that we weren't gonna leave on time, the engine was in no mood to come to life. so what was to be done? repair the damn bus, obviously. at least, that was the collective mood amongst some of the passengers. the ones who took action immediately were prospective passengers, the ones who didnt have a booking and only wanted to travel short distances anyway. i heard this huge chap telling his friend 'chal gaadi ko dhakka maarne me help karenge, phir to seat dena hi padega'. even though i already had a seat reserved, i joined in the bus pushing squad, because i love pushing large vehicles around. soon, tourists were clicking pics of us while we pushed the volvo up and down the bus stand in an effort to start it. at about seven it was evident that our pushing wasnt lifting the spirits of the bus' battery, which had been identified as the culprit by then.

at this point, the reserved passengers began showing an interest in the proceedings. they were led by a goan auntie who was in her early fifties probably, and she took charge of the situation and directed things for the rest of what would turn out to be a very long night. there was a kannadiga guy about my age, who duties involved interpreting the aunties instructions to the drivers, and then interpreting their responses (a considerably tougher task given finding alternative words for some of the unparliamentary language they tended to use at times, though i wouldnt blame them). there was a techie who spoke only english and kept reminding us that he was chainsmoking through this ordeal (which made me want to tick him off with a smart-aleck remark, but the possibility of borrowing a smoke from him later kept my mouth shut) and a bihari who proved to be our saviour for the night. one of my friends slept off, and another had to catch a train so he fled for margao at the first sign of trouble. so on one side the drivers feverishly tried to figure out the problem by following a checklist barked out at them by a mechanic on the phone from bangalore, while on the other side auntie tried to arrange for a refund. the first glimmer of hope came when the drivers, misguided by the voice on the phone, traced the problem to the fuel filter, and not the battery. after fiddling around with it for a while, the tried starting the engine again. the filter exploded instantly, covering everyone in range with a fine spray of diesel, and that's when all hope was lost. explosions and i are on good terms, so i couldnt help but grin with childish glee at the scene, though this didnt gain me much approval with auntie and her squad.

problems compounded by 8pm, since it was well and truly dark now, and aunties efforts at a refund were properly stonewalled by the higher brass at KSRTC. they did not have a spare bus in goa, the repair depot was miles away and the bus would need to start to get there anyway, every other bus leaving goa for bangalore had either left or was full, and having spent an extended weekend in goa, nithin and i were left with little money for another ticket in any case. so we decided to stick with the bus, and tried to make arrangements for accommodation in case we had to stay the night there in Panjim. the poor drivers were getting nowhere with their repair efforts, and so *drumroll* i decided to pitch in too.

the addition of an LED torch to the cellphone is probably one of the most underrated innovations of the last decade. my cellphone, which happens to have such a torch, has so far been involved in cooking chicken during powercuts, repairing my bike in the middle of nowhere etc, but now it was time to up the ante. it was going to aid in the repair of a volvo bus. a volvo mechanic had been spirited in from 50km away thanks to the efforts of auntie and her squad, and he worked under cellphone light to try and figure a solution. which he did, and it involved travel to some place 30km and back to get a spare filter. while he went to fetch, nithin and i decided to grab some dinner, and in our haste to make it to cafe venite and back, i left my atm card in an atm machine, which ate it up. so now, we were really screwed since nithin had no money, and i was left with no way to access my money until next morning when the bank opened. venite plan was dropped without further discussion, and dinner was had at a cheap restaurant where the cheapest drink was for three bucks. yes, cheap.

the mechanic returned with a spare filter, and proceeded to replace the damaged one. i had no clue how to replace the Volvo 20 853 583 Fuel Filter for the B7R, but seeing him work, i definitely had concrete ideas about how NOT to replace one. the old filter was screwed in tight, so our bright mechanic (who was welcomed with applause when he arrived, applause we later rued) decided to cut it off with a screwdriver. this left a stubborn stub of a filter which resisted attempts from all his tools to gain a grip on it. it took him all of an hour and forty five minutes to get this stub out, which included a gentle reminder that he was twisting it in the wrong direction. he eventually managed to replace the filter, and was greeted with further applause and crossed fingers. another attempt was made to start the bus, and from the not-so-encouraging sounds made by the engine, we figured he hadnt quite fixed it. the battery was still down.

in the midst of all this, i was talking to the drivers. they told me that if this were a tata or ashok leyland bus, they wouldve taken out the filter themselves, jury-rigged one from a jerry can, and got us all to bangalore. but, 'ithu foreign bus sir. volvo. yella computer'. apparently no maintenance training is imparted to them, and the maintenance department guys have specifically asked them not to touch anything if things head south. 'tumhara dimaag mat lagao bola woh log', he said pointing at his head, and then said his dimaag cant understand the bus anyway since everythings in english. when richard hammond of top gear remarked about vehicles that can be repaired with a brick and a piece of string, he was right. but the volvo, with all its new fangled computer jiggery-pokery, still had some bits of rustic technology in it. and the batteries fell in that group. they could be jump-started using batterries from any other bus. all we needed were a pair of jumper cables.. wait, what?

this was at 1 30 am and there was not a soul in the bus stand except us and a security guard who was trying to cheer us up with music from his handheld FM (he cranked up the volume for euphoria's maaeri and delhi 6's dil gira daftan, much to my happiness). aunties squad had pretty much given up by now, since they had pinned all hopes on the volvo mechanic, who quietly kept away from the crowd and declined to help with the batteries. we found one karnataka bus, and pleaded with the driver to bring his bus to ours so we could hook them up, literally. after ten minutes of pleading, he relented and drove his old rusty bus over, and since there was no jumper cable available we were faced with the task of removing batteries from both buses, exchanging them, starting up our bus, and then replacing them. still working under torchlight, we opened up his battery box, only to see that everything was bolted down. i love dismantling things (especially if i dont have to put them back together) and in about ten minutes, the battery box was in pieces thanks to the efforts of the bihari chap and i. then we took out the volvo's battery, switched the batteries around, and let the drivers connect things up. another attempt was made to start the bus, but now it was completely dead. even the screens in the dashboard had gone blank. The bihari, whom i'v already proclaimed to be a life saver, figured that the drivers had connected the negative and positive leads incorrectly and that it was a miracle they didnt short the batteries out. pretty soon, that too was rectified, and finally, this time to deserved applause, the bus roared to life. we had successfully field-repaired a Volvo.

people are helpful only till their needs are met. once the bus was running, all manpower except me, the bihari, and one of the drivers left the spot, leaving us to replace the batteries. the driver of the other bus looked on helplessly as everyone else left the scene to climb into the Volvo which now had its A/C running. The four of us toiled for another half an hour to rebuild the battery box i had successfully dismantled, and when it finally resembled a respectable battery box (thanks to the resourcefulness of the bihari, again) and we had no parts left, we placed the batteries, wired them up and his bus was back alive too. the driver who had earlier made the computer remark likened the old bus to goddess lakshmi, and from the tone of his voice i could make out that he wasnt just saying it because his high tech comfy Volvo had ditched him, he meant it. He would probably have been happier driving that uncomplicated beast of a machine.

i was back in the bus, the last to board while the drivers made final checks before leaving, covered in grease, diesel dirt and crud from the battery. it's not everyday you get a chance to pitch in to repair a bus, and it turns out all you need is a half baked mechanic, a mallu with a torchlight, a resourceful bihari, and a respect-commanding aunty to bark out orders in a militaristic tone. as i sat back in the comfort of the A/C, i pondered over what a day it had been : swimming in the sea all morning, walking miles to a bus stop, a volvo refusing to start, fending off a marriage proposal mom brought (yes, that happened too), losing an atm card, repairing aforementioned volvo.. not bad for an adventure. which brings me back to the point i made initially about the discussion vijai and i had about my goa trips. everytime i went there on the bike, i had no troubles. once i took a train, and since the ticket wasnt confirmed, i spent the night in front of the toilet on an RAC coach. once i went by car, and spent 23.5 hours on a the road thanks to a traffic jam where we moved 10 kilometres in 9 hours (contrast this with the fact that my fastest time on the bike is 10.5 hours total). and this time i took the bus, and all this nonsense happened.

Vijai advised me not to take a flight there, ever. I think i'll stick with the bike.

PS : in an unjustifiable act of vandalism fueled by the frustration caused by the events described above, i helped myself to one of the buses volvo badges. I dont repair buses for free, anyway.

notes from the road..

ill be honest with you, when it comes to roadtrips, im a little superstitious. i stop at places i think are lucky, i consider some things to be omens, etc.. all because of the total uncertainty that comes with hopping on a bike and just taking off. its kinda scary, ill admit. so, when a trip is preceded by a series of unfortunate events that under normal circumstances i would consider bad omens, its kinda amazing the trip happened at all. it was supposed to be a ride to ladakh, but due to lack of preparation i pushed it by a week, only to receive news that the lahaul-spiti valley route that i was planning to take was closed due to unseasonal snowfall and that the army were airlifting people out of there. so i decided it was a good idea that i was going to leave only a week late, only to find out that my laptop blew something and needed expensive repairs. which took a hit on my budget, and left me with too little money to do the trip to ladakh. so i decided on rajasthan instead. all this while poeple who said they'd want to ride along or ride pillion were dropping out of the plan, so along with everything else, i had to consider the fact that i had to ride alone, which is not something iv done except for a coupla chennai pondicherry trips. and in the meantime there was the whole circus of providing excuses and justifications to people who expressed concern about this undertaking, as well as the usual elaborate set of lies to cover my tracks from my parents :P so all things considered, there were enough reasons not to go.

so why did it happen, why did i go? well, have you ever gotten tired of planning something, dreaming of something, talking about something, but never actually doing it? tired of doubts, both from within and from others, tired of being scared of the unknown, and what it'll bring? well i have. at some point the sheer curiosity of what this experience would be like got the better of all the concerns, worries, superstitions, doubts etc.. so i literally said to myself on saturday the 26th, sometime in the afternoon, fuck all this, ive gotta go. so i hastily borrowed 5k, hopped on the bike without the usual bunch of spares, oil and stuff, and was off on sunday. and, on the night of the sixth, reached bangalore safely after about 3700 kms on the road.

so these are the notes from the adventure.. be warned, they are kinda random, copied from my book.

stats :

distance: 3700 + kilometres (speedo cable was out for most of the way to ahmedabad, and thanks to durga pooja, no mechanic was open all the way :| )

fastest stretch : belgaum kolhapur, average speed 100kmph

slowest stretch : 30 km post satara, average speed 30kmph, heavy rain, took an excruciating hour

chai stops : 15 (chitradurga, hubli, kolhapur, pune, andheri, kharod, ahmedabad, baroda, surat, asgani, kankavli, morjim) for a grand total of 37 cups of tea :D

punctures : 1

accidents : 1

birdhits : 1 (hit and killed a crow that was just taking off. couldnt be helped. if i'd managed to avoid it, i couldve added a 'no animals were harmed in the making of this trip' tag to mine.)

fuel cost : rs 4265 wonlee

trucks

most drivers i know hate trucks. mostly because these fuckers are scary on the road. and for the most part i agree. but there are reasons why i like trucks too. the vast majority of them, mostly the longhaul truckers and not those insane ones on eichers and smaller trucks, are professionals. they use the low beam at night, they move right over if you honk before and overtake, and on a slightly evil note, they make good obstacles for any cars you might wanna race :D they also have the most amusing things written behind them. i thought all trucks had the usual Horn OK Please and We Two Ours Two lines written behind, but having seen enough trucks now,im happy to report that some have absolute gems behind them. i read off 'naseeb apna apna' (which kinda struck me considering luck does play a good part in these roadtrips), 'hai bombay chellam' (on a tamilnadu truck, guess he was kicked about doing bombay runs), 'A zara hatke' (which made me chuckle), etc etc. even the simple 'awaaz do' instead of horn please, painted in styles that would make WordArt proud, was refreshing to see. yes, you do get bored on the road, this is one of the many ways i keep myself amused, especially when there isnt much of a spectacular view around.

also, i play this game. the taufeeq vs siyad game. when i was maybe three, i used to categorize the flat fronted lorries as siyad, and the snouty ones as taufeeq, ostensibly since i must've seen examples of the two lorry types bearing those names. so i count how many taufeeqs and siyads i see. siyad usually wins, but then i start trying to give statistical weights to taufeeq sightings, and try and equalize them in my head, by when i realize that im out on a trip to have fun, and not crunch numbers, so my mind drifts on to less tedious matters.

volvos

i hereby state that i hold in high regard every vehicle with a volvo badge on it. especially the buses. pretty much whatever i can do on the bike in terms of speed and manoeuvrability, they can do it too. and that is very, very scary.

puncture

when i had planned the ladakh trip, i wanted to keep a puncture repair kit with me in case i got a flat in the middle of nowhere. but when i started this trip on impulse, i didnt bother to get one. but i did get a flat, and it so happened that it was right in front of four puncture shops. i didnt know whether to put it down to fate or to the possibility that these same shop guys might have planted nails in the road there. either way, i needed a new tube, and pintu (the mechanic i woke up with great difficulty from his post dussehra revlery slumber) and i did a 1.5 kilometer trek to the tube shop. i say trek because it was a tough walk, negotiating between deep potholes on the side of the road as well as the garbage piled besides them. the tube guy was again woken with great difficulty, and in his drunken slumber he sold me a tube worth 350 for a mere 200. pintu mentioned this fact to me only after we left the tube shop, saying 'woh chutiya ban gaya, aap ka tube 350 ka tha'. to celebrate, i bought him tea n snakes at a restaurant that was open on our way back. it is a different matter though that pintu did a piss-poor job of fitting the tube and i had to stop 17 kms later to get it fixed properly.

police escort

ahmedabad is a very confusing city to drive into, and i lost my way almost immediately. the irony wasnt lost on me, after having navigated bombay and pune without a map. i stopped to ask a two policemen on a bike, who were talking to two other chaps on another bike. they noticed the KL registration on my bike and asked me where i was coming from. once they heard my answer, and once it sunk in, they insisted on driving with me to show me the way to paldi. on the way, we stopped for tea, and i was only too grateful and glad to answer their questions about my ride. one of the guys on the other bike, pravinbhai, was a building contractor, and wanted to know if his hero honda splendour would make it to delhi. i told him yes, i dont know why. and he wistfully said, yeah i guess the rider has to be strong, not the ride. the cops turned off before the paldi bridge, denying me the childish glee of riding into nid as part of a motorcade :P

dogs

i saw the cutest stray puppy ever on the road to khed. the little guy nearly ran into my path, but this time i was slow enough to stop, unlike with the crow. i wanted to bring him with me to bangalore, and actually pondered the possibility with midhun, my cousin who was riding with me part of the way, but decided against it. i was worried he'd get run over out there, and sure enough there was a dead puppy a few kilometres later. felt kinda sad. and ironically, today i spoke to marion and she told me they are looking for a puppy, and i felt like kicking myself for not having brought him with me. i hope he's ok.

wipers

old boyhood notions never die, they just transform. i used to think as a kid that spectacles with wipers would be kickass cool, now i think helmets with wipers would be kickass cool.

rain ride

as much as i hate riding in the rain in the city, id always wanted to do a long trip in the rain. well, i got my wish this time, except i was least prepared for it. of the 3700 kilometres, 500+ were done in pouring rain. if i count wet roads too, i could add another hundred odd kilometres to that. and it was hell, to say the least. the rain was so strong on approach to pune that i couldnt see a thing except the tail lamp of the car in front of me. it took me an hour to do 30 kilometres, stopping multiple times on the way. not that the stopping helped, there was usually no place to shelter, and i just stood by the side of the road looking like an idiot while people in cars which were warm inside passed by. i had to remind myself multiple times that i asked for this adventure, and iv gotta take what i get. my phone and camera died, and my clothes, even the ones inside my allegedly waterproof bag, were soaked.

but to be honest, if it werent for the rain, the experience wouldve been much less exciting. there were random moments, like when i sheltered in a shed in the middle of a sugarcane farm with some 20 odd people, and waited out the storm wondering if the shed would hold, while someone passed around masala peanuts. no one spoke a word, but the gratitude was visible on everyones faces.

riding from bombay to khed on NH17, i realized i may have found a motoring heaven in india. it was a beautiful twisting mountain road, treacherous due to the pouring rain. we hit this stretch towards sunset, and the lack of light compounded problems. and then we ran into fog. visibility was reduced to a few metres at best, and i was honestly wondering whether im gonna be one of the first guys in history to die after reaching heaven, as opposed to the other way round, which im told is more conventional. after a few minutes of literally stumbling around on the mountain road, a jeep came along and i decided to follow his tail lamp. god bless the guy who thought of tail lamps. if this jeep was gonna drive off a cliff, i didnt care, i was gonna follow that tail lamp.

the only time we had to succumb to the rain was at chiplun. after 270 kilometres in continuous pouring rain, we were dampened both spiritually and physically. my eyes were red from the raindrops hitting it at high speed (helmet visor down meant poor visibility), all clothes were soaked, the bike which had so far been misfiring like a north korean missile upped the ante a bit and was now misfiring like a pakistani copy of a north korean missile, and i was shivering too bad to even be able to hold the cup of chai i had in my hand. my cousin midhun, who had joined me for part of the ride, was rubbing his palms against the chai cup for warmth. i made some kinda lame joke asking him to rub it on the cigarette for more warmth, and he had this incredulous expression on his face before he asked me how on earth is it that the bad jokes section of my brain is still intact after all the beating we'd just taken. i guess this news would worry a lot of people :D

bad jokes

bad jokes are a good way of killing time on the boring stretches. you could thank the stars that i dont even remember half the ones i came up with, though the folks over at the daily punnedits page wouldve appreciated it. place names along the way are a good source for generating these jokes. for instance, theres a place called Kim on the way from bombay to ahmedabad. so if you take your car and make a dash for Kim, you could be Kim Car-dashian. its terrible, but i was chuckling for miles after i passed the board that said 'Kim' :P

oh and on the hill roads outside bombay i came up with this one.. which town exists merely to inconvenience you? khed in maharashtra. asuvidha ke liye khed hai. :D

other funny place names for which i had made up jokes but forgot them include watre, gangwali, aani, garag, kundi and unn. next time i should somehow attach a dictaphone to my helmet :D

but all things aside, humour is a good way to keep going especially when you're tired after riding hundreds of kilometers, but would have to do a hundred more to get to where you want to go.

BCU, BHU

one astronomical unit, or AU, is equal to the mean distance between the earth and the sun. similarly i made up the BCU and the BHU. the BCU stands for Bangalore Chennai Unit, and BHU for Bangalore Hosur Unit. they are roughly equal to 340km and 40 km respectively. they serve no practical purpose except to boost my morale. when i've ridden 400 kms, and i have another 350 to go, i tell myself, hey thats just one BCU away. and bangalore chennai is a route i've driven 8 or 9 times. and even though the road im on would be hell compared to the beautiful highway to chennai, the fact that im only as far away as chennai from bangalore would lift my spirits a little, and keep me going. BHU is used similarly, during that last phases of rides, when you're getting into a city and have to put up with tons of traffic after having done such a long smooth ride. so i remind myself i take an hour to get to hosur, and that is far worse than what im facing right now.

push the mind, the body will follow

while im loath to give a moral of the story, i will admit that each of these roadtrips have given me little nuggets of learning. on the morning of friday the 2nd in ahmedabad, i woke up with a fever. i had to ride to bombay and then onwards to goa that day, and the plan was to do over a thousand km that day. i didnt tell anyone of the fever, and made excuses for not leaving in the morning while i slept all day to see if the fever will subside. it didnt. im the evening i decided to leave anyway. and i was amazed for the next twelve odd hours. once i made the decision to leave, the fever disappeared. there was no more body ache. the ride to bombay was smooth, and i halted at bhartiyas house for three hours of rest before heading to goa. three hours of sleep later, things were still fine. then i got the news that goa, along with pretty much most of southern india, was flooded and that i wouldnt be able to ride. and once that realization hit me, the fever and aches returned in half an hour and i was popping crocins. that sorta thing has never happened to me before. i was genuinely amazed that it happened, though i make no claims of being able to repeat it. but, at the cost of sounding like one of those pesky self help book authors whom you see on shopping channels, ill say that if you push the mind, the body will follow.

since this has been a random assortment of trip notes, i dont quite have an end piece for this. but considering all the experiences, only about a third of which ive written about here, ill say the same thing i told my friend nithin on the phone.. i got out looking for a kilo of adventure, ended up with a ton instead.

Travel notes, mostly useless

shouldve typed this up long ago, but now that the papers i wrote it on are getting worn out from lying around in the depths of my bag, i think its finally due

McLeod Ganj - i swear to god we were received at the bus stand by lionel messi. well, the resemblance was uncanny to say the least. though it must be said that it took me at least five minutes to link the guide's face to lionel messi, and as a hardcore messi fan, i'll never be forgiven for that. Reluctantly, we didnt take Messi's hotel. It was dank and pylee swore there were suspicious stains on the sheets. So we went to the Tibetan Ashoka Guest House instead. For fifty bucks a head, i can tell you honestly that you will not find cosier accommodation elsewhere in the country, probably the planet. I'm usually averse to tourist guide books, but I have to grudgingly thank Lonely Planet for this find, and Amrita for lending it to us.

Monks - the most chilled out people on earth. Maybe these are the superficial observations of a casual visitor, but i think i can see why people from all over the world are attracted to their culture. They seem to have this ability to take everything in their stride. I couldnt sense, for instance, the ego and stubbornness i had seen in sadhus from my brief experience with members of that breed. the monks here seemed happy, had a polite smile for you anytime, and had embraced things that life threw at them. email, bikes, sneakers and crocs to name a few.

Thukpa - I've always had the opinion that this is the king of all tibetan food, filling in every sense of the word. rarely have i gone to a tibetan food joint without tryin the thukpa there. the ability to show off my mad chop-stick skills is an added attraction, of course. But i think, no im pretty sure, that i have had the best thukpa i'v ever had (or ever will) in my life so far at the Aroma beer bar in Mcleod. If i go ahead and try to describe it, there's a good chance i'll fail miserably, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

HRTC Bus Ride - According my esteemed co-traveller manu a.k.a. Mathew a.k.a. SI Mathappan, all buses on earth are crewed by two people : conductor Rajappan (pronounced rayappan in true blue mallu style) and driver Dasappan. (extra driver would be affectionately called spare Dasappan). we were taken from Dharamsala to Manali by none other than Lewis Dasappan, who was HRTCs driver in F1 before they left the sport to focus on public transport in himachal. But Lewis seemed stuck in F1 mode, since he seemed to find no difference between his bus and a McLaren F1 car, especially on the winding hill roads. The sound of bus tyres squealing is something i had never expected to hear except on BBC's Top Gear maybe, and I am deeply indebted to him for this new auditory experience. Few drivers scare me, and he was one of them. Coming from me, that's saying a lot.

"We should've fuckin' gone to a beach" - ever seen the movie snatch? remember the repeated refrain of "i fuckin hate pikeys"? the aforementioned line was my refrain for this trip. each time we ran into any sort of adversity, this was said. It must've been an overdose of goa trips, cos each time we were too cold, or too tired, or too broke, this phrase was uttered, accompanied by visions in my head of little cocktail glasses with plastic umbrellas in them. And i fuckin hate cocktails.

Film Photography - I have a film SLR. when i needed a camera, digital SLRs were useless and ridiculously expensive. so I went for a then state-of-the-art Nikon F-80. When every tom dick and harry around me had a digi SLR a coupla years down the line, I half heartedly extolled the virtues of old fashioned film photography. But now, Im sorta full hearted. I like the uncertainty of it. I'll never know how the shot turned out until I go to a GK Vale in bangalore. Maybe iv loaded the film wrong and the entire damn reel might be blank. But then again, good things happen to those who wait, so maybe the reel will be brilliant. My fingers will be crossed till i pay Mr Vale for his services and pick up the envelope from his shop. Its also an uphill battle for film photography. Even in touristy locations like Manali, film is hard to come by. To compound things, i decided at nine in the night that i have to have to have to photograph the hills silhouetted by the lightning, so i went out for film. And i had to search eleven shops (and a cyber cafe as a last ditch effort) spread over two kilometres before i found two overpriced rolls of ISO 400 film. I climbed back up the hill to our guest house vowing that I'll hold out even when shooting on film becomes much more of a hassle than it already is.

Signage and Hoardings - Sometimes when i see badly photoshopped shop and advertisement hoardings, as well as signage boards with poor english, i get this quixotic urge to arm myself with a laptop and vinyl printer and three horseloads of vinyl sheets and go about correcting those. Then i realize we would lose the charm of these places and would all turn into some boring place like germany. So, Child Bear it shall remain.

Plastic -At all the places i travelled to, i couldnt help but notice that the air was clean, and for all practical considerations, unpolluted. the ground was another matter though. plastic and garbage greeted us everywhere we went, including at supposedly secluded places like the tse chok ling monastery and gulaba enroute rohtang. i cringed and cribbed each time i saw plastic, almost reaching boiling point when a bunch of plastic bags ruined what was otherwise a stunning view of a river on the route to rohtang. the cribbing continued till i reached a wine shop and bought booze for the night's party, and realized that thanks to the recent ban on plastic bags, we would have to lug six bottles up the hill to our guest house. then i cribbed for the lack of a solution for this problem. I guess im too used to civilization. And it is an interesting problem, since my attitude is hypocritical in that i was using tons of plastic back in bangalore for my convenience, yet was demanding that the local populace not use any at all so that when i visit their neck in the woods (when i get tired of bangalore), i should have a decent view. dont expect me to become an eco activist overnight, but i'm guessing i'll spend more than a thought in this direction in future.

Tiger Eye Guest House - Even lonely planet didnt catch this one, despite it being in existence for ten years. we stumbled on it by accident thanks to the efforts of mr Piles, and immediately ditched the popular dragon guest house in old manali that we were considering till then. sure, the dragon had a better garden and view, but this was something else. the approaches to this place looked like something out of the movie roja, the terrorist camps to be specific. narrow gullys bordered by old wooden houses, cowsheds and firewood piled high led us to this gem of a place to stay in. the caretaker was a lovely old lady who mothered us to the point that even the normally rambunctious mr Piles was reluctant to party before she went off to sleep, in order to avoid gaining her disapproval.

Man U - Im surrounded by manchester united fans. Im the lone Gunner+Barca Fan in a sea of Man U idiots. two such Man U fans were travelling with me, and kept pointing out others who were wearing Man U merchandise. I've always wanted to pull their mightier-than-thou legs, and looking at my friend nithin's Man U skull cap, i may finally have the answer : man chested uniter.. saying something gay sounding like that should surely ruffle their feathers. Addendum : that backfired worse than a north korean rocket. they were ruffled, but recovered quickly to attack both my clubs, Arse-anal, and B-arse-a. Damn. I should think these things through.

Planning - How much of a trip should be planned? should it be micromanaged to the last detail, or should there be no planning at all? I guess we saw both sides of that in this trip. It was fun that we didnt have any initial plans except to find snow and make a peg of whisky with it, but then it wasn't fun that we couldnt go to the kibber monastery and lahoul-spiti since we forgot to check up on something as elementary as the prevailing weather conditions there before we set off. The lonely planet book was useful, admittedly, but the fun parts of this trip, as well as other trips we're done, were the ones where planning never even entered the picture. it is a bit of a dilemma then, since neither proper planning nor the near complete absence of it can guarantee a successful trip. of course, if it really came down to me, i'd burn the book, hop on my bike and go, most likely having forgotten my repair kit at home.

The rain - sometimes i hate the fuckin rain. sure, it was really really pretty to see the hills bathed in a freezing foggy drizzle interspersed with hailstorms, but on the other hand it ruined my planned paragliding session. Just as we reached the Solang valley for a short and expensive bout of paragliding, everything turned gray and murky and no paragliding happened. even if the rain had nearly killed me by starting after id taken off for paragliding, i wouldnt've held a grudge, id probably have cheered.

Horses - cliche, but beautiful creatures. i felt a bit guilty about having to use them for the trek up to the ski slopes, but since there were no other modes of transport available except for foot and a ridiculously overpriced maruti gypsy combined with the fact that we were four slackers with weak lungs and hardly any exercise, there was no option. we would never have been able to drag the heavy ski equipment up the hills on foot anyway. I had a nice horse whose name i couldnt catch from the incoherent speech of our guide, so i christened him gandalf since he was white and since i had forgotten the name of gandalfs horse anyway. and he liked to eat ice so the convoy stopped at his whim quite a few times much to my amusement and glee. it must also be mentioned here that we had a moment of sheer terror when something (we believe inappropriate advances by its rider, pylee) irked the horse at the end of the convoy and sent him running along with the rest of the horses. we held on for dear life while the guide managed to catch up and slow them down. i may now have a vague idea of the stuff cowboys are made off.

Kids - we had nine of them for company on the train trip to delhi. And ill miss them all. one looked like the kid from little miss sunshine, another like the 'there is no spoon' kid from the matrix. each had enough mischief up their sleeve to terrorize a fair sized town, so nine in a coach was pretty intense. pylee literally had kids trying to hang on to his long hair, and that is only a slight exaggeration. but they made the journey loads of fun, and we played cards, hide and seek and generally engaged in a lot of delirious nonsense that these tiny ones were able to create out of thin air. 36 hours flew by, and at the end we'd all grown kinda attached to each other that a coupla the kids wanted to take us home with them.

The mandatory funny story - each time my school friends and i go on trips like this, one or the other old obscure story gets dug out. this time it wasnt my turn, thankfully, but the story is funny as hell. this was when we were in tenth standard, and tuition on weekend afternoons were the norm. one of our friends, for privacy's sake we'll call him VK, had dialup internet at his house, and it was a novelty then, and it also meant we had access to porn. so the guys would all gather at his house after tuitions and wait patiently while dialup brought up the pictures one pixel at a time. then it was distributed via floppy disks. so one day, another friend was called up by VK. he claimed to have found the ultimate in computer technology, he could erase the clothes off a clothed girls pic. the second friend in question, N, was naturally intrigued and went over to see. and VK opens microsoft picture editor, and using a blur tool of some sort, starts working on a pic of some actress. he started scratching downwards with the mouse starting at her neck.

the folly was realized when they passed the area where her nipples should have been, and the two quickly figured they were merely spreading the colour from her neck. legend has it that VK kept trying until he almost got to her waist, but ill put that down to exaggeration. sitting in the balcony of tiger eye guest house with a few beers at night, this story popped up, and i am happy to report that beer, like milk, can come out your nose.

a few short ones..

skiing - looks easy, deceptively easy. bloody tough. falling is not fun, and getting up is even less fun.

apple cider - try it. try it. try it. beats beer any day. and i'm trying to figure out how to brew it :D

shooting stars - saw two on this trip, as opposed to 7 or 8 on the earlier goa one, and then forgot to wish on the second one. not that its worked so far.

himalayan trout - ranks in my top five fish, along with pearl spot, seer fish, crab and shark. and coming from a mallu for whom fish is vegetarian, you could believe the recommendation.

phones - not really necessary. i hope my boss wont read this on the blog.

this wouldve been longer, but i lost one sheet of paper with my notes on it. oh well, guess u were spared.

In praise of the unscheduled stop..

y'know what i like? waypoints.. not the planned sort, those random ones that you make in the middle of journeys. i've always loved those, i'm a big sucker for an unscheduled stop. there is nothing i love more than a train stopping at a remote station for another train to cross it, or when a long distance bus pulls into a gas station or a restaurant, or when your flight gets diverted to another airport 'cos there was a thunderstorm over your destination. there is something strangely alluring about these places, even though they may not be particularly beautiful or interesting if you look at them from outside the perspective of an unscheduled stop. yet when the train pulls in at a station whose name i'm not sure i can pronounce, i run to the door at the risk of losing my seat, even.
i guess it's sorta like meeting someone you know you're not gonna meet again. like those strangers you strike up conversations with when travelling. you might find them interesting and try to talk more, or even end up talking more yourself knowing there's the safety of anonymity. you're only together for so long. they might lead dead ordinary lives outside of that interlude, but you might think they were the most interesing person you met. its the same with these places.
i step onto empty platforms with nothing but bored and sleepy dogs that are actively ignoring me, and i think i've reached someplace i might want to spend a long time in. i linger on the platform, trying to understand the smells and sounds of the place, and often stand transfixed long after the train has started moving, only to snap out and reluctantly walk, then jog and hop on the footboard of the coach that will take me to the destination. when the bus stops on a highway for passengers to answer nature's call, i get out even if i dont have to go and then play this little game of walking as far away from the bus as possible before i hear the driver honking and then rush back. when my flight to ahmedabad stops at bombay on the way, i walk down to the rear of the aircraft and stand as close to the open door as possible, and i can tell you that's about the only time i wish that i could be in bombay. cos i already know i'm going away.
similar things happen on the bike too. i'm an estimates guy. when i set off on the bike, i've got numbers running in my head. distance, estimated time of arrival, time enroute on various legs, fuel, mileage.. time being the most important. i get disturbed by people who want all the pencils on their desks facing the same direction, but i get pretty cranky if these numbers of mine get disturbed. which usually means the stops are pre-planned, and i zoom past for most of the journey. yet often, something catches my eye about some places. its more often a small rock or water filled ditch than a scenic mountain, but i stop for the couple of mintues allowed by the confidence that i can catch up with my numbers by riding faster and drink it all in.
i guess destinations dont hold that charm for me. i mean, when you get on a vehicle to go somewhere, you're most likely going to reach where its taking you. factor in all the obstacles and possibilities you could possibly think of, but even then the probability is well in the high nineties. and that is what bothers me about thinking of life as a journey, from birth to death. we forget wandering, we look at waypoints as just things to pass through, not to linger and savour. we are often too bothered about saving our seats than going to the door to see new stations waiting.

transdeccan.

it was not a trip, really. it was the cross section of a country. i chose to cut india from chennai to goa, and saw the country in a way most people can't. the policeman who hitched a lift in chennai, the dead cows outside the city limits, the hundreds of dead dogs, blotches on the road as martyrs to development, the simple life in the farms of karnataka, that asian chick on a pink enfield bullet.. it cant be seen anywhere else, and i think i can vouch for that with some degree of certainty. i got a chance to go on a roadtrip in america, and the actual trip was the part we dreaded though it was in a car far more comfortable than the bike i used for this 2000 km trip across the deccan. the roads there were arrow-straight, the scenery pretty much the same. nothing dramatic, nothing is thrown at you that you wouldnt expect, except maybe the odd deer crossing the road to become roadkill but then even that is marked by signs. no bullock cart coming opposite you on the fast lane on an expressway, no expressway disappearing into two feet deep potholes that nearly throw you off your ride, in short, nothing that you wouldnt expect, especially if you've been in that country a while.

well it certainly is more interesting here. take for instance, the fact that my pillion and i were cruising along what we though was the expressway to bangalore, only to find ourselves unexpectedly airborne after hitting a bump at 110 kmph. i doubt if you can find another country where there's an unmarked bump across the freeway. i know it couldve killed me, but im not complaining for now. if it were an arrow-straight road to goa, i would probably have taken the bus. which brings me to my point : the whole trip felt good because i took a risk. it was the longest trip i'd done. there were enough people and reasons telling me not to do it. that ranged from my own parents to skeptical friends, the condition of the roads to the endurance of the rider. but that one moment where you think, oh what the hell, im going... thats what biking is about methinks. its a gamble to trust ur fortunes on a machine and a million unknowns, and when your gamble pays off, you feel more alive than ever. the risk, the feeling of having done something out of the ordinary and mundane, that cannot be explained, it can only be experienced. you can sit on an armchair and compare biking to any number of alternative activities, but nothing will come close to even beginning to describe that experience.

it teaches you about what it means to be alive, what life is. your sense of perspective changes in ways you cant imagine. the office commute that i was cribbing about suddenly seems insignificant in comparison. i get impatient when bangalore traffic crawls to a halt, but imagine what i felt when after an hour of cruising at 110 kmph, i get stuck in a traffic jam at a tiny town that has four rickshaws and a bullock cart, all of which were actively engaged in creating the aforementioned traffic jam? i didnt feel angry, i felt humbled, i could say. suddenly, stopping in bangalore after 2 minutes of riding at 40kmph didnt seem so bad. it teaches you to manage your thoughts, especially if you're a compulsive worrier. i'd definitely recommend a bike ride to that kind of people. there are so many new things before you that you are struggling to drink in, that you suddenly stop worrying about punctures, failures, office, relationships, mortgages, secrets... for a few moments at least, its you and the surroundings. you might be sharing the space with a thousand other people, but you feel truly alone and alive amongst the unknown around you. and everything else just fades out...

it teaches you about death as well. there is death on the roads in every direction you look. people, animals, villages, trees, towns, all dying or dead in one way or another. one of the first sights out of chennai was a couple of dead cows. followed by over thirty dead dogs on the way to bangalore. what unsettled me further was the realization that the black blotches i saw on the road wasn't tar melting under the hot tamil nad sun, it was the dried blood of hundreds of dogs, mute vitcms of civilization. in fact, my faith in civilization was all but shaken when what i thought to be a dead cow on the road north of bangalore turned out to be a dead man. some poor homeless man had been hit by a vehicle, and all that people had done was to put stones around him to prevent further collisions, and just stand around seemingly indifferent to him. my faith in myself was badly shaken as well, for i didnt stop either. at that point i was telling myself that the man was probably dead, and that i wouldnt be of any help, but later i questioned myself whether the trouble of attempting to save a homeless man was worth less than the selfish pleasure of a new years party, and i was mute to myself in answer. the scene stayed in my mind the whole trip, as it does today, and tempered my usually headstrong nature. i realized anything could spell death, a bullock cart coming in the opposite direction in the fast lane, or a single stray rod bent in the divider partition. but instead of merely fearing death, i accepted the fact that the road that carried me was running as a dividing line through the lives of so many poor people like that dead man, and that at the intersection where our lives meet, there were bound to be casualties on either side. as i (much)later talked to a friend, i ruminated on how the dead man and i ended up on different sides of the dividing line, and how easily fortunes can push me to the other side as well.

im a big picture guy. i hate to be bothered with details usually. which is where the bike journey changed my perspective again. i learned to respect the smaller stuff. be it a handful of stones on a curve in the road, or a tiny metal valve on my bike, i came to realize these small things could bring my big dreams to a halt. that hit me right in the prime of the trip, on my way from jog falls to honnavara, hurtling through the mountain twisties at extreme speeds in a bid to make it out of the mountains before the sun went down. i took a curve with my best friend riding pillion, and a bus came up around the bend and i braked hard. the rear tyre started washing out due to some gravel i hadnt seen but could now feel, and being on a lower gear i revved up for traction. the tyres bit in, i recovered, and realized what a few tiny stones couldve done to me there. and maybe it was the realization that im powerless in the face of these million small things, but i became superstitious as well. i now have a ritual in the morning where i look the bike over, start it and place a hand on it, feeling the vibrations, listening to it. if im alone i find myself talking to the bike as well. i cant communicate with the machine, nor can i claim to know if its working perfectly by placing my hand on a piece of vibrating metal or plastic, but i can sure as hell tell you that it makes me feel good about the bike, and in my eyes makes the bike more a venerable friend than a heap of japanese engineered metal and plastic that money bought.

the threads that bind me to my daily realities, my web of security, i saw it thin out right before my eyes. you go out of reach of mobile phones and gas stations, on a machine that is not infallible, ridden by two guys who are not invulnerable.. riding through a forest dirt road from goa border to dharwad, i realized how ensconced i was in this web of security. the bike was falling apart on the dirt road which was hardly more that a loose collection of rocks in some places, i was fighting for control and keeping from crashing was taking a toll on me and my pillion, tempers were frayed, we were out of reach of mobile phones and our friends or anyone, for that matter, had any idea where we were. all i could do was keep my wits about me and drive. crisis management? this makes the best management gurus look retarded. all that you hate about everyday life, all the troubles, you suddenly see that all those dont really matter. in that sense biking also clears your view of the big picture. not everyone will take the chance to see the world on two wheels, but there is no other panacea experience i can recommend. you see the threads that bind you stretch really thin, almost to snapping point. you start wishing you could break them, but know you can't, that you will be at work next monday. but you will have felt good pushing a limit.

a journey is also the best way to get to know someone. to know if what you thought of them was right, to see if they're a good friend or merely a good travelling companion. i went with a bunch of guys i've known since we were 3 feet tall. ive only grown two and a half feet since then, but our friendship has grown far more. and amongst all the strain and tribulations of such a tiring journey, i was grateful to see that this friendship could weather everything. there was friction, there was fun, and there was a collective sense of contentment at having accomplished a long journey, but its not the roadtrip im talking about. its a journey that started at 3 feet tall.