A long and eventful day.... (part 1)

It was one of those few days when getting up early in the morning- as early as 4 am, was not at all challenging. I wished I could say it was because of the excitement surrounding the trip. But no, the reason here was quite different. It was simply because I could not sleep the previous night, thanks to the crappy hotel room. The ongoing monsoon and poor maintenance had caused molds on one corner of the wall. The ceiling fan made its presence felt only by its creaking sound. As if this was not enough, there was a swarm of mosquitoes in the room that were having a real feast. I tried to mummify myself with my shawl so that I don't let an inch of my skin exposed to mosquitoes, but I was only defeating the purpose. There was no way I was going to sleep this way. Aditya was beside me and he too didn't seem to be asleep. Now and then he slipped out of bed and browsed on his Android based Nexus one. I had set the alarm at 4.30 a.m in my cell phone. But that seemed to be unnecessary, I was out of my bed a good 15 minutes before that time. My head felt heavy because of insufficient sleep.

As I was about to get along with my morning chores, cursing the unfriendly turn of events last night, I heard a few of our guys convulsed with laughter in the adjacent room. I too was in stitches when I realized that Manju had mistakenly used 'Fast Relief' (pain balm) to brush his teeth instead of Close-Up! Looked like he too had had meager sleep last night. But this act of his had surely refreshed everyone, including himself. In one hour time everyone was ready to check out of the rooms. We paid the lodging charges and caught a bus to airport.

At the airport we realized that we had not taken the print out of Jeevan and Chetan's flight ticket. Their ticket was booked separately as they had joined for the trip later. However, we showed the soft copy of the ticket in Gore's mobile and got the ticket. We entered the airport lobby after first level of screening at the entrance. We checked-in our luggage and collected the boarding pass. We had about an hour before the  scheduled flight departure at 7.30 a.m. We had breakfast in one of the airport stalls. A veg-puff and tea cost me twice the cost of regular meals! Over the next few minutes I sat enjoying my first experience at the airport. After a thorough second level of screening, we entered the airport terminal. We waited with other passengers for our turn to board the flight. We sat facing a small part of run-way where I watched a couple of flights land, and few others take-off. Finally, our flight arrived at the taxi-way. There was an announcement requesting the passengers to get ready to board the flight. A couple of buses owned by Go-Air did rounds to take the passengers to the aircraft. It was a Boeing 737 aircraft with passenger capacity of about 150. As we entered the aircraft, we were greeted by the cabin crew with a 'well-practiced' smile. We took our seats and fastened our seat belt. One of the crew members started demonstrating the safety procedures with another crew member reading out the instruction in the background. It was supposed to be a serious drill, but the guy acting the safety procedures broke into laughter mid-way that made it look funny. The aircraft started taxiing to the starting point of the runway. Since it was raining, the window had fogged up and we could not see anything outside. The aircraft turned by 180 degree and was now ready to take-off. The CFM56-3B-1 high-bypass turbofan engines ran to their full potential and the resulting acceleration pushed us back into our seats. The wind had wiped the fog off the window and we had clear outside view during take-off. The aircraft soared higher and higher. We passed through the rain bearing clouds and there was sunshine. The view outside was magnificent. It was  an ocean of clouds shining in the bright sun as far as the eyes could see. The co-pilot radioed to the passengers that we were traveling at an altitude of 35000 feet, at 900kmph and temperature outside was -41 degree Celsius! In about half hour time the aircraft had begun its descent in steady free fall movements. We reached Mumbai's Chattrapati Shivaji International airport in about 40 minutes. We had a transit flight to Delhi in an hour from Mumbai. The airport looked pretty messed up with aircrafts all over the place. Another example of poor infrastructure. Mumbai badly needed another airport to ease the congestion here. We loitered in the airport lobby to kill time.

In an hour we were again air-borne en route to Delhi. After 120 minutes the flight landed at Indira Gandhi International airport. The aircraft spent another 35 minutes on the taxi way before reaching the domestic terminal. We patiently waited at the baggage claim area looking for our luggage to arrive over the baggage carousel. After a while we checked out of the airport with our luggage. Reddy had already arrived a few minutes before us from Bangalore and was waiting for us outside the airport. With his unique sense of humor, he is a star in our group. Reddy's t-shirt had caught everyone's attention. From a distance, it appeared some funky t-shirt with lot of design. But when we approached him, we realized it was a plain white t-shirt with lots of well wishes, phone numbers and Indian tricolor (to name a few) scribbled all over it by his office colleagues. It would serve as a nice memento for the trip.

We were done with the light moments at the airport and it was time to get along with our plan. As per plan we would go to GATI to collect our bikes, get them repaired if there was some damage and try to reach till Chandigarh along with Tavera that we hired. Reddy was in-charge of hiring the 4-wheeler from Delhi. He was surprised when we told him we were leaving from Delhi today and asked him to call the driver to the airport. Obviously there had been a communication gap. Perhaps he was not informed about the change of plan. He thought we were leaving the next day and had booked the cab accordingly. Murphy's law strikes! Time for some contingency plans.....

And the adventure begins...

     Like any other day, I woke-up to the morning alarm and after having snoozed it for 3 times, I decided to slip out of my bed. The day we had been so eagerly waiting for had finally arrived. As I sleepily dragged my feet out to the living room I found my 2 bags, packed over the last 2 days, kept against the wall. I had stuffed every thing that would be necessary over the next 2 weeks. I was fairly confident about having taken all the items in the check-list. However, I was particularly worried about the inner wear. I had about 16 days to spend with only 8 pairs of it, 4 of them bought specially for the trip!

     I had not applied for a leave on that day on the pretext of leaving early and I had to spend half a day in office. Did not have much to do in office than give my data access to team mates and transfer the work to them and accept wishes for our safe journey from the colleagues and friends. After an early lunch, me and Jeevan collected our bags from home and set out to the railway station. The rest had already left for the station or would leave shortly. I checked my watch and realized we had only 5 minutes before the train arrived. The train would stop at Udupi station for 10 min and leave to Goa at 2:20 pm. Without wasting time, we hired an auto and stuffed our luggage into it. With so much luggage we had little space to sit. We took 2 bag-packs on our lap to make space for us. I placed my right foot between the 2 bags below. My bag extended till the edge of the door and there was no space to rest my left foot. I left it hanging perilously outside the door. It was getting very uncomfortable and wished to reach the station soon.

Aditya arrives at the station... Finally!

Monsoon makes fields beautiful....

We reached the station at 2:15 pm. The train had not yet arrived at the station. You can take your chances with Indian Railways by being a few minutes late and yet get away with it. Its a race which you can expect to win 9 out of 10 times. However, I had got over-confident during my last visit to Goa and missed the 8:00 am Mangalore - Verna train- a dubious honor I could do without! Any given day, I would happily let someone take away that honor, but the prospect of Aditya taking it today made everyone of us feel utterly uncomfortable. Aditya had the printout of our online railway ticket. Still worse, none of us knew our seat numbers.  The clock had ticked past 2:20 pm and there was no sign of Aditya or the train. We had called him twice to enquire his whereabouts. "Raaste mein hi hoon, bas pahoch raha hoon" is the what we heard for the second time. We curiously examined a couple of auto-rickshaws as we eagerly waited for Adi's arrival. As a contingency plan we called up Aditya and got our seat numbers. Hoping that the TC would have seen Idea Ad (what an idea Sirji), we thought showing an online copy of the ticket in Gore or Manju's mobile (both Samsung Spica- GPRS enabled) would suffice. Finally after 5 anxious minutes, Aditya, clad in cramster jacket and wearing a cyan color T-shirt, arrived at the station. Thanks to Indian railways, Adi had won this thrilling race. Adi's arrival had transformed our mood from one of anxiety to joy and cheerfulness. A few minutes later the train arrived at platform 1. Next 5 hours, we passed through the beautiful landscapes along the Konkan coast. The fields, streams and the sea looked more beautiful in ongoing monsoons. We reached Madgaon station at around 7:30 pm. We hired 2 pre-paid taxi at Madgaon station and reached Vasco around 8:30 pm.

TEAM at Madgaon station.

Goa being a tourist hot-spot, the hotels are quite expensive. We decided to check-in to a modest hotel as we just had to spend the night and leave to Delhi early in the morning. We ended up checking into a hotel a bit too modest for our liking. Due to incessant rains, the water had seeped into the walls, peeling the paint off the wall. The stale smell in the room gave us more of a storage room feel. We learned our first lesson of the trip- to examine the rooms before checking in. We had dinner in another nearby hotel. We ended the day with some light moments at the bus-stop outside our lodge. :)

Bus-stop outside our lodge in Vasco.

Build-up to the Himalayan Odyssey

BIKE ride in the mountains of Himalayas had been a long cherished dream. I had heard about passionate riders making this trip to Himalayas from different parts of the the country. I had also seen awe inspiring pictures of riding in Ladakh in NDTV's 'The Himalayan Odyssey', organized by the Royal Enfield. For bikers, riding in the Himalayas is nothing short of a world cup or a holy grail of Biking, where their riding skills, patience, courage and endurance of the bike are tested. I was very fascinated by the thought of riding in Himalayas, but being in southern India I never seriously considered doing it; Himalayas seemed way too far to travel on bike!

One fine day my friend Praveen, who organizes most of  our weekend trips around Manipal, told me about the trip plan to Ladakh on bike. First thing that came in my mind was that I may not get this opportunity again. This had to be a trip for a life-time. Without second thought I gave my 'Yes'. And I was not alone, Prashant, Uday and Vidyanand also joined at the same time. Vishwas and Manjunath, who planned this trip, had already started working on the itineraries. Aditya was also on board. Soon I had my first trip meeting :) It took some time for me to digest the fact that I was indeed going to Himalayas. I was very excited and couldn't hold my joy during the first few days we met to discuss the plan and itineraries. Days passed by and we tentatively fixed our trip date as July 15th, 2010, where we were to be joined by a group from Bangalore, which included my cousin. However, we later postponed it by a week to July 22nd, 2010. Back then, this date was more than 2 months ahead. We were so excited about the trip that the 60 odd days seemed too far to wait. We were afraid that longer the time, greater the chances of Murphy's law playing a spoil-sport. But we had no option but to have patience and wait and keep our fingers crossed. Contrary to our expectation, a few more guys joined us over next few days- Jeevan, Reddy and lastly Chetankumar. Final number- 9 bikers and 2 guys in car, as back-up riders.

Next few weeks we continued to collect data about stay, places of interest, food and fuel availability, best time for biking and other different aspects of the trip through various channels- blogs, websites, friends etc. We had collected tons of data that aided us in our planning. Flight return tickets from Goa to Delhi were booked 2 months in advance as it was economical this way. We planned to reach Goa by train in the evening of July 22, 2010, spend the night in Goa and catch the early morning flight to Delhi the next day. Soon after reaching Delhi, we would collect our bikes from GATI transport, get them repaired in case the bikes got damaged during transport and try to reach at-least till Chandigarh. We had also prepared an exhaustive list of items we needed to purchase- from warm clothes to travel bags, medicines, biking gears and many more! I had spent nearly Rs. 8000-10000 rupees on shopping for the trip.

Priest performing bike-puja at Prassanna Ganapati Temple, Manipal

On the morning of July 11th, 2010, (Sunday), our trip formally began at 'Prassanna Ganapati Temple', were all the bikers ( except Adi ) had gathered to seek Lord Ganesha's blessing. We got the bike-puja performed by the priest on all 8 bikes. After this ritual, we had breakfast and we headed to Mangalore to ship our bikes to Delhi through GATI transport. The manager was kind to accept our request to collect the bikes and finish the paper work on Sunday. However, he could send the bikes only on Monday. We were able to strike a good bargain with the manager (at-least we thought so) who finally settled to Rs. 10 per kg transport charge. My Pulsar 220 shipping cost me Rs. 2966. Without our bikes, next 10 days were a bit painful when it came to commuting within Manipal. It was quite strange how luxury can spoil you. Yes, having bikes is a luxury, realized it now that I was bike-less! I remembered the days when I didn't have a bike in Manipal; how we used to walk 2.5 km  to Tiger circle; or wait at bus-stop to catch a bus to go to Udupi. Those days seemed like a previous life.

I gave a visit to my parents in Hubli on the last weekend before the trip. The decision to go home on that weekend was a result of lots of things that go into your mind when you are about to set out on an adventurous trip- nervousness, fear and and things difficult to explain. The 2 days I spent in home were also the most difficult ones. I had only told the half-truth to my parents, that I was going on a North-India trip to Leh, but didn't mention taking my bike. I felt guilty whenever I talked about the trip to my Mom and Dad. At times the 'emotional me' urged me to tell the whole truth to them, but my logical self warned me against it. Sometime ago, I had to bear my Dad's and uncle's wrath when I took my bike to my friend's marriage 200 km from Manipal. There was no way they were letting me go to Himalayas on my bike. It was impossible for me to explain to them my passion for biking. I thought keeping quite about it was a win-win condition for me and my parents.Before heading back to Manipal, I sought their blessing (and forgiveness). I was sad throughout the journey to Manipal. Once in Manipal, I was able to put all that behind and focus on the upcoming trip.After some last moment shopping on July 21st and with our bags packed-up, we were all set to go!