Chasing horizons

‘Just Ride’ this was the catchphrase I learnt on my last Hampi ride with the wifey… we had rode with the Bike Nomads for their fifth annual meet and I got to meet a lot of different bikers who ride just for the passion of biking… nothing to prove, no wars to fight, no revolutions to lead, no lives to change... just the joy of the ride.

During this meet I decided that I also want to do a solo long ride and see how it feels to be all alone on the roads chasing the horizons, witnessing the changing landscapes and feeling all the thoughts blow out of your hair in the wind… I wanted to RIDE!

The thought had been in my mind since a while; all I needed was a bit of motivation and push in the right direction from a few guys to get me going. I decided that I’ll ride from Bangalore to Ahmedabad and back for the Christmas and New Year holidays that I had applied for.

Planning and preparation for the same started almost immediately! Got spare cables for the bike, spare tube for the tires, a little bit of tools (most of the tools were borrowed from friends) puncture repair fluids, balaclavas, spare visors for the helmet, and a few other small things) all of my biker buddies here at Bangalore and in other locations like Pune, Bombay and other parts of the country who knew about my plans were really excited about the whole thing and kept me really motivated and charged for the ride. The last minute preps included an oil change for the bull’s engine, checking of all the wiring, tightening all the nuts bolts and screws and getting the monster tank filled to the top!

The last two days before the ride were the most painful for me; I was too excited and couldn’t calm down at all! My spirit was itching to cover all the roads that I can. On Friday I dropped the wife to the airport (she was traveling the ‘sane way’) saw the ridiculously long line at the check-in counter and told her that I’ll be in touch once I hit the road. We said so long and I went back for my final packing and preparations. The saddlebags were packed, tank bag had enough food, fanny-pack filled with the necessaries and my riding gear was laid out for the early morning ride. Once satisfied with the packing and preps I crashed thinking that I’ll wake up at 3am, get ready and ride out by 4am.

Next morning!

Awoke by 4:30am, (darn this is late!) by the time I showered, dressed and set out, it was already 5:45… I was kinda worried that I might not make my time if I started so late! But then the words of a veteran biker echoed in my head “ride for the joy of it… don’t set too optimistic goals… you can stop whenever you want, wherever you want!” I finally rode out ‘dressed to the tooth’ at 5:45am on December 22. Strangely the roads were relatively empty (thank god for the winter mornings) I reached out on the NH4 highway by 6:15ish and then let the bull rip for a while… both the biker and the bike were fresh and prepared for a long run for the day! Amazingly, since I was solo, the bike reached 100kmph easily and I couldn’t even feel it! My first stop was around 100kms from B’lore the morning chill had set in, a faint light on the horizons I clicked a solitary picture from my phone-cam, drank some of the mango juice I was carrying and started again.

First pit stop was the Reliance A1 Plaza at Chitradurga (around 166kms from B’lore) when I pulled in the plaza it was already quite crowded but being a solitary guy you find a place to sit pretty easily! I ordered a nice south Indian breakfast of Idli-Vada and some freshly brewed filter coffee… the junta there had some kids with them and the kids were the friendliest people I saw there! All of them lined up around me and started asking questions one of them I still remember (we going to Bangalore, you go where?) (Are you India?) heh heh, was really funny and cute, I finished my breakfast quick and rolled out again.

From Chitradurga I rode straight to Davangere, the road is one straight stretch with a few potholes and very few craters, I could maintain pretty decent speeds, crossed Davangere in a flash and then the road just started turning from good to bad and bad to worse! Almost one hundred kilometers of sand, dust, dirt and no roads! But as I’ve learnt from my numerous rides in Karnataka, every stretch of bad road eventually ends and gives way to a nice well carpeted good tar road. By the time I reached Hubli-Dharwad, the road conditions had come back to normal and then improved again! My stop here was a very smallish chai and sootha break. By now, the muscles in my butt and my hamstrings had started a bit of tingling… not serious pain yet but yeah, the seat did feel as if it was on fire! Heh heh…

I crossed Belgaum and entered Maharashtra when I landed near Kolhapur… I kept taking my 10minute breaks every 100kms on the way but they were not very special, maybe a sootha break and a swig from the water bottle and ride again. Upon hitting Kolhapur I realized that the state had changed as the traffic sense amongst people suddenly changed drastically! I saw too many bikers, pedes and dogs along the road but didn’t stop, just became extra cautious to ensure that I don’t crash into something. After Kolhapur as I neared Pune I could sense fatigue setting in, thankfully on every break I would find motivating and inspiring sms messages on my cell phone from the fellow BNers. I crossed the Karjat tunnel when darkness had already set in, called up Capt. Nandu Chitnis who was my host for the evening at Pune; took directions from him and rode on into Pune! What a feeling! YAY! YAY! I had covered over 800kms in a day!




Pune has changed a lot fro what it used to be in 2001. I had spent 2 days in Pune in 2001 and had fallen in love with the town, found the people very amiable, the traffic manageable and the town to be small. But now! Oh my god! The city had expanded out of its limits… it was like looking at a really fat lady trying to fit into a tight bikini :D people everywhere, crazy traffic and too much pollution… I could actually see smog settling on the city while I rode past.

After managing to get lost a few times and coordinating with Capt, I finally landed in his apartment’s parking lot. 891kms clocked on my trip meter! Was exhilarated but also was a bit pooped out when I pulled the bike in. Upon meeting Capt I started feeling much better... I was showed the guest room and I rushed into the shower for one of the best showers I had in ages! Amazing hot water, washing all the stress and aches off my body… upon stepping out of the shower I find Capt waiting with his trademark 2KF (for those who don’t know Capt and the story of 2KF, it means ‘2 bottle KingFisher’ – a premium brand beer) sat with Capt, guzzled some beer, smoked more soothas, chatted about this and that, and Medini aunty called us for dinner… what a sumptuous meal! Palak-paneer, aloo-gobhi ki subji, fulkas, dal-chawal, and some amazing sweet. I ate like a glutton and then crashed… in less than 15minutes I was fast asleep! The only drawback here was the excessive amounts of mosquitoes in the area! I woke up around 1am with a swollen face (swollen because of all the mosquito bites) pulled my bedding right under the fan and slept off again, woke up around 4ish, got dressed, messaged Adi Bhelke (a fellow BNer who was going to ride with me from Pune till B’bay) woke Capt in the wee hours of morning to say goodbye… had a cuppa chai and rode out with Adi.

Early morning, cool breeze, mist, fog and smog all along the way! We took the route towards Bombay… the road was whizzing past as we stopped at Lonavala for breakfast. Ordered our last ‘south Indian’ meal for a few weeks; had some utthapams and coffee, while having our breakfast we saw a gang of some Bombay based bikers who all rode in with some cool bikes! I remember seeing a goldwing, a HD sporster and one Suzuki sports bike… funny part is that we were admiring their bikes and they in turn were looking at my bull! Well I must admit, my bull is a pretty looking steed, and for the ride it was laden with the saddlebags, the tankbag and lot of other stuff on it. Felt really funny! From Lonavala we started for Vashi (Bombay) where Prasad Temkar (BN B’bay chapter) was going to meet us.

Dunno what was going through my mind while doing the Lonavala twisties; I missed turning on one of those and climbed on the sandbank… almost an accident happening, but there were a few guardian angels looking over my shoulder that I was on the bike and the bike was all okay after this incident. After this, I kept my speeds relatively lower on the ghat section tillwe hit Bombay. Finding Prasad was not too hard but we had spent quite a lot of time on the road and it was already late morning when we actually met up. My bull’s chain was a bit loose by now so Prasad found a local mech who fixed it for me in 30bucks. Adi said goodbye here as he was riding back to Pune now, and Prasad took over the lead to guide me out of Bombay city towards Thana (where the milestone says Ahmedabad 545kms – in Prasad’s language) the climatic differences were very obvious, I could feel myself sweating like a pig in my riding jacket and the heat was becoming unbearable. We stopped once more on the way to get me a bottle of water and some more mango juice in a bottle (this was courtesy BN B’bay chapter as Prasad put it) reached Thana in a while after that, had our soothas and Prasad did show me the milestone showing Ahmedabad 545kms. Said farewells and I rolled towards home time in my watch a little after noon.

My initial plan was to ride till Surat, stop over for the night there and then ride towards Ahmedabad the next day… call it the amazing speeds or the amazing roads, I reached Surat around 4ish (not bad!) stopped at a nice chai tapir for some chai, chatted up with the locals there, they were too amazed to see such a wacky looking bike and an even wackier looking biker :D I got to know that Narendra Modi had won the CM elections for Gujarat again! Called up the wifey from there and she said that the whole city of Ahmedabad is in a jubilant mood and major celebrations are happening all over, roads blocked and stuff. She also suggested that I should stopover somewhere on the way and not hit A’bad.

After Surat it felt that god was not on my side at all! The roads were nonexistent. There were diversions every couple kilometer and everything was covered in sand and dust, with mile long lines of trucks and cars… felt as if I wouldn’t be able to get out of here anytime soon! My average speed had dropped from 80kph to 40kph and I felt like a slug moving along the really bad traffic. I actually was cursing myself now in my helmet, screaming and shouting that I shouldn’t have done this stupidity, should’ve taken a flight like every other person and not thought about riding out… finally Baroda came and the roads improved… it was around 8ish now and I stopped after Baroda for a chai and to ask the chaiwallah if he knew any decent hotel to spend the night. This guy was one extraordinary enthu cutlet. He was coaxing me, “kya saab, itna saara chalake aaye ho aur an 100kms pehle ruk jaoge?” honestly, he did make sense, he gave me one complimentary cup of masala chai and some more words of inspiration and I rode out in the night!

I had decided that I’ll reach home tonight, nomatterwhat… strangely all my exhaustion and fatigue had suddenly vanished and I was all charged to reach home now… stopped at an Essar gas station and put in some of their ‘advanced petrol’ in the bike (must say it felt better than the shell that I usually use for my bull!) called the wifey from here and told her that I’ll hit A’bad in a couple hours. The ride from here was pretty decent, once again, the winter evenings had demotivated most of the ‘faltu’ riders on the way so the roads were relatively empty. When A’bad was only 50kms away I encountered a trio of ‘filmy, faltu, lukkha’ bikers on one 100CC bike racing with me, I usually avoid racing with such guys who don’t even have the brains to wear a helmet on the highway but they were becoming irritating… every few minutes they’ll zoom past me, slow down, try to cut my way and do the same circus again… I kept maintaining my normal speeds but they became too irritating! I finally twisted the wrist and shot over 120kph for a while, the roads were still empty and traffic was strangely was nonexistent… in a short while I lost them out of my rearview mirror and I regained my ‘normal’ speed.



Ahmedabad came with its hustle and bustle, I was sane enough to remind myself that I’ve approached into the city and the speeds were relatively slower and the concentration was extra high… went and picked up the wifey from her parents’ place and we rode together to my house… my parents had no idea that I was riding all the way from Bangalore to Ahmedabad, so when I rolled through the gate into the compound, they just freaked out! Funniest thing is that they didn’t even recognize me for the first few minutes… heh heh




The bike was finally unloaded of the bags, I took off the riding gear, had a nice shower and then we sat and chatted. My dad had ruled in his ultimatum that I will not be allowed to do any of such antics in front of him ‘EVER’!

The next morning I woke-up fresh and recharged, took the bike to the Royal Enfield dealership in Ahmedabad, met Samir Dutta the owner of the store who got the small knickknacks serviced for free! That guy had a great spirit and I really hope I get to move to A’bad to expand a few biking clubs there aswell!

Well this was my dream ride that finally came true. The trip meter clicked 1648kms in a total of two days and I now feel much better about myself and the bike… I was supposed to ride back too but that was a flop story and I’ll tell you about it in the next post.

A few people I want to mention and thank here:

Capt. Nandu & Medini Chitnis – for their amazing hospitality, the amazing food and the 2KF.
Adi Bhelke – for riding with me from Pune till Vashi
Prasad Temkar – for guiding me out of Vashi all the way till Thana and showing me the A’bad 545kms milestone.
Doc Arnob & Doc Prithivi – to keep me company and sending their guidance every pit stop.
Rocky – kept calling me everytime I stopped and motivated me
Wifey – for being who she is and keeping the whole matter hush-hush till I landed in A’bad
Cdidi & Jiju – they were with me all through the ride ‘long-distance’
Anoop aka XH – for lending me his tools
Samir Dutta – for servicing the bike free @ a’bad and spending so much time with me there.

Finally I thank RedEye – for being the beast it is and taking me places…


Life is all about the journeys, not the destinations…

RIDE ON!


p.s. stay tuned for my part 2 to this blog (my stay in A’bad and my journey back)

IronButt - officially :)

“Dude, are you awake or did you decide to chicken out?”
“Its only 5:40 yaar, we are meeting at 6:30 right? Tell me where”
“At the junction of Outer ring-road and Mysore road”
“thik hai, will be there… C ya”

This is a conversation that happened really early on the last Saturday, and I’m wondering how would it have felt, if I backed out of this ride???

Since the time that the wife had planned a one week ‘work trip’ to Ahmedabad, I’ve been itching to do a ride that was a bit longer than my usual 300kms a day day-rides. And I was clear that I don’t want to do a BIG group ride also, something sort of a cannonball run with a few bulleteers that I like to ride with. Sadly, all of them were either busy or didn’t want to join in and one of my old colleagues who I had lost touch with for over 3 years suddenly popped out of the past and said that he also wants to ride! My first reaction was, “what the hell? I don’t even ‘know’ this guy any more and he suddenly comes out of the blue suggesting that we ride together?” but, then slowly the saner me started taking over and said that boss, you didn’t ‘know’ him then also… just ride with him and see if you like the company and if he is a prospective member for one of your bike-clubs. I agreed.

Honestly, I was slightly impressed with his preparations for the ride and his enthusiasm! He actually went and got his tyre changed, his battery recharged before the D’day!!! The day for the ride was decided; we were to do a ‘iron-butt’ ride on 17th November (a Saturday) all the way to BR Hills and back… a ride of little over 500kms in a day.

We met on the Mysore road (I was late by 7-8 minutes) around 6:40am, his first reaction to see me on the bike was somewhere between a WOW and WTF… as usual, I was all prepped in my riding gear from top to bottom, the only thing missing still is a decent pair of riding boots… hopefully I’ll get them too! And he was in his denim jacket and jeans without even a pair of gloves!!!

Well, we started the ride, since it was still relatively early in the day, the traffic hadn’t picked up and we could do pretty good speeds! This is one of my favorite roads to ride on, smooth 4lane well tarred blacktop with enough visual consolations. Our first pit-stop was Kamat’s for a light breakfast and coffee… strangely, Kamat popped into the view even before I actually started the feel of the ride… we pulled over just to find a full house! The whole place was jam packed! We negotiated ourselves a table for 2 after buttering the head waiter there… breakfast was the usual Kamat junk, idlis made in the banana leaf and vada.

After the breakfast and a brief break we started again, the destination now was mysore-nanjangud… the roads were not too dense with traffic and we could manage pretty good bursts of speed well over 100 (sheer pleasure!) Mysore was in sight pretty soon… we were supposed to take the Mysore ring-road towards Nanjangud but I guess I was too focused on the speeding and forgot to take the turn… after around 2 kms inside the city Raam appeared in my RVM frantically flashing his head-light and honking like crazy, I slowed and he said that we were to take the other road for Nanjangud! Darn, took a U-turn and got onto the ring-road. This road is amazing! I straight smooth piece of road with lush greenery on both the sides… looks like a road leading to the horizon, into the unknown… the ring-road soon turned off into a 2lane highway, this was a decent road, not too bad and nothing too good… traffic had started picking up and we had to brake often to dodge crazy maniacs in their four-wheeled coffins… just before Nanjangud we saw a detour off towards BR Hills and decided to venture this road, this was our first big mistake of the day… the detour turned from a decent 2lane road into a stretch of sand, gravel and rocks… since I was solo and I was too enthused to show off, I stood up on the foot pegs of the bike and kept on ripping on the almost off-road ride, the bike took too much punishment here… after a while the road evened out to a smoother terrain and we decided to take a butt break as soon as we spot a chaiwallah. I guess god was on our side during that part of the day coz as soon as I decided to stop, I noticed a pretty decent dhaba on the road, we pulled into the dhaba and asked for some chai, I also had to update the wifey that I have been safe and in one piece till now… made the quick call and had chai, in fact the chai was soo tasty that we had one more round of it, we noticed some tame ducks and turkeys at the dhaba so played with them for a while. The dhaba owner seemed to be a pretty enthu cutlet! Maybe our dressing and the funny looking bikes aroused his curiosity; so he started talking to Raam in Kannada, I didn’t understand what they talked apart from who are you, where are you from, what are you doing here and why is the other bloke dressed in such funny costume? I tried to pitch in the conversation with my limited knowledge of the language but to no avail, my mate told me that the dhaba guy has suggested a different, much better and scenic route to the place, I was pretty impressed! But alas, this guy told me that we should stick to our predecided route and shouldn’t go any other way. Foiled, this is not the adventure of biking! This is not the motorcycling spirit! How can you keep going on and on over the overly trodden roads? Where is the fun of riding through uncharted territory? Phooey…

And it turns out that the road we took kept turning from okay to bad and from bad to worse… in most of the parts, the road was completely nonexistent, but we kept going on… finally we reached the KGudi forest check post, the first thing the security guard at the gate insisted was that I turnoff my headlamp! I told him that I know it’s on and I’m comfortable riding when its on even at noon, but he insisted! One more phooey here… I turned it off, signed our names in the register, the forest officer appeared out of nowhere while we were writing in the register and picked up a conversation, again the same, where are you from? Where are you off? Why did you ride all the way when you can get a decent state transport bus? Why is this bloke dressed in such funny clothes? This was the limit for me! I started riding into the forest while Raam was still talking to the forest guard, taking this as a cue; Raam also rolled off… this was one scenic piece of land! Almost 4kms of straight road running through the jungle into the hills up ahead!

Well, the road did lead into the mountains also and we rode through some of the worst twisties I’ve ever seen! Really bad road, crater sized potholes on the road and we riding here trying to negotiate the potholes and making sure that we don’t ride off the edge of the road into the forest below! After around 20kms of riding into the jungle brought us to another check-post and this time I switched off the headlamp even before we reach there, the guard again asked the same questions that I was so familiar with, Raam was patient enough to answer all of them… after riding through this second check-post, I noticed the jungle lodges board. This just brought back memories of the time I spent in February, the 3 days I spent with the wifey for our honeymoon! I thought of stopping by and saying hi to Nahar who is a good fried and the manager of the KGudi resort. I rode into the familiar yet almost forgotten trail towards the resort. And what surprise! Nahar was sitting there in the sun along with Anant who was here when we had come for the honeymoon… what a bloody pleasant surprise! We sat there chatted for a long time, Nahar was more than kind to offer us lunch which we readily agreed to (heh heh, who would say not to free food?) after the nice food and some more chatting, we started on our way back around 14:40… Nahar suggested we take the route through the jungle past BR Hills and ride towards a town called Yellandur for our way back, after Yellandur there apparently are 2 different routes for Bangalore.








We bid adieu to Nahar, His wife, to Anant, to Vikrant and to KGudi (with a silent promise in my mind to return back soon!) the start for the way back was overly shaky the forest department had started working on the roads and forgotten about it, so the whole patch of the road was dug-up but we managed to ride through it… a few kilometers later… HEAVEN! Smooth tarmac, single lane road, lush cool forest on both sides! And amazing twisties! We spotted some chital, wild dogs and a few mongooses on the way… this patch of the road got over in a flash and we were at the final check-post to signoff and bid the place goodbye…

After getting out of the forest, we took the ‘immediate right’ turn towards Yellandur, the road was again not too good and not too bad, I guess I had gotten used to the bad patches of the road by this time after over 50kms of ‘almost’ offroading. Through Yellandur we were to reach Malavalli but in the spirit of riding we missed the turn that we were supposed to take… eventually after 20-25kms we realized that we are going ‘wrong way’ turned back again and got on the proper route to reach Malavalli. Malavalli brought us two routes to Bangalore one was via Maddur, on the Mysore highway again and back to Bangalore, the other was via Kanakpura into Bangalore… dunno if both of us had lost our marbles at that moment of time… we decided to go through the Kanakpura road, BIG MISTAKE! The road was nonexistent, complete butt-breaking offroading adventure for over 20kms, stopped for chai and to loosen the taut and aching joints, checked with the chaiwallah how long will the bad road last and he happily smiling said “saar, 18 more kms” darn, I hated my life at that moment! I was so frustrated with the bone jangling ride by now that I was begging for a ‘normal’ road… after a few kilometers the road conditions finally improved a bit, instead of the dirt offroad, we had a patchy road with a generous proportion of potholes… after bouncing off so many bumps and crossing over crater sized potholes my bike’s rear end had started giving issues… the tail light and rear indicators didn’t work, the tyre started wobbling like crazy and the air-pressure was almost nil! But the ride was still on!!!

Darkness came too early! Just to remind us that the battery work that Raam had gotten on his bike didn’t work. Result? His headlamp was dimmer than a candle. So I had to cut my speed, and make sure that he is almost tailgating me and riding off my bull’s headlights… wasn’t I happy for putting those auxiliary headlamps that illuminated the way ahead? The speed that we had maintained throughout the day had drastically reduced to 50-60kmph here also the heavy vehicles wanted to showoff their brighter and much better headlamps to they blinded us almost running us over… anyhow we reached Kanakpura missing a lot of turns on the way and taking the longest route back to Bangalore. The journey was not over yet!

Slowly, painstakingly we finally managed to reach into Bangalore, I stopped at a gas-station to get my tyres inflated and some gas in the tank… Raam missed looking me turning into the gas-station and kept riding on… we got lost again! He was on some road and I was somewhere else! Coordinated where to meet in Bangalore via cell-phone (don’t I love technology?) and I started into the town alone. My brain had gone numb of the excessively long ride and most of my joints were actually screaming for some rest coz of so much offroading adventures. Thinking of going home soon, I took a wrong turn and got lost in Bangalore!!! This was the final straw for me… I couldn’t believe that I actually managed to take a wrong turn and instead of going to south Bangalore I was bouncing around the streets of east Bangalore… thankfully I managed to reach BTM after 1hour in the city! Found Raam there, had some dinner (sorry guys, I was so tired that I don’t remember what I ate) reached home, parked the bike, she looked like a wounded soldier; tired, bloody, messy and broken down.

This was the butt-breaking, ironbutt ride that I had, over 540kms in a day and over 200kms of really bad roads managed. I was tired, sleepy and aching, but I was proud that I could ride ‘alone’ when I had to. I was satisfied that I rode so much and I saw so many good sights on the way. I was glad that I did what I had been thinking since over a month finally happened.

Finally I earned myself some bragging rights of riding so long in a day and over such varied terrain… I have earned my smirk for this one ride :-)