One Mega Ride

It has been a long time since i have penned down a trip story... not that there has been a dearth of trips in the past months :P What i think, the last post was of my first trip outside of Mumbai to Karnala, and that was in March 2009... Today it is 30th of September 2009... it has been a long time... especially for a guy who has been waiting to join onto his first job since past 3 months (there are 3 more to go [:(] ), doing nothing but lazying around at home and blowing his/my parents' hard earned money through the exhaust of GadGad... (sorry bich mein electricity cut off ho gayi thi, this is Hydie for you :), so flow mein change feel ho sakta hain) Haan to kaha tha mein? But you know i dont regret my tripping at all... Ulta thats my only way of setting free... Living Life as you call it :) Its not that i hate the routine... its just that to acquire that Ultimate goal of life: Happiness, it is many a times necessary to separate oneself from one's LIFE... and believe me the Thought of Shunya or Nothingness is the greatest high you will ever great... (the power goes again... but no worries i m on a lappie ;)) So as it goes i have been doing this Tripping thing for past 7 months on my ride GadGad (RE TBTS) which has lead me to discover/explore/enjoy places like: Karnala, Raigad, Koraigad (Lonavla), Murud-Janjira-Kashid-Alibaug, Chhota Morbe Dam (Panvel), Kothligad, Tungareshwar, Mahabaleshwar, places some of which i had been to in my childhood, and some others that i never even had heard of :P
So this time it was meant to be Hyderabad... a journey of 750 km from Mumbai to Hyderabad was to be my first real long distance ride and that too solo. I so wanted this to be Mumbai to Goa... but that can wait... the ocassion was RK's (teacher, mentor and friend) marriage (Yes I need a reason to ride: a beautiful destination, an ancient place, or just to meet a friend, i am not one of those riders who ride to cover roads... sorry that is not me) I somehow convinced my parents for this trip, promising them it would be my last trip until December 2009. So for two weeks I prepped for this ride: collecting stuff like bungee cords (to hold the luggage), a hip pouch, high wattage H4 bulbs for headlight, changed the oil and filter. The headlamp thing was a headache since my stock bulb wasnt H4 and the reflector didnt even fit a new socket... i wasted a good 4-5 days, over 400 bucks and precious time on the trip (will brief on this ahead).
The day was decided to be 28th September (Dasara) and time 0400 hours... i knew i had to cover a good amount of ground and 15 hours would not be enough... I had even been to Koraigad with Surve bros (Harshad and Preetam), Abraham (Insti Bro), and newbie-Ajay, just the day before to test the bike's performance and it felt great... so early morning all my family members were there to see me off... Mammu performed the puja on GadGad (Dasara ritual)... i had oiled the bike and checked the chain and i felt it to be loose... and i had already lost a sprocket to this reason… so I was very cautious this time... i rode at a max speed of 80 kph and gear shifts were firm but delicate... I took off at 0600 hours (already late by 2 hours)

I wanted to be at Solapur for lunch so I made sure I didnt take any breaks and photography was minimal... The first break after the petrol fill up at BP (SEEPZ) was at Lonavla (100 km 0800 hours)... the ghats to Lonavla were fog filled and the sun was nowhere to be seen and I realised this was going to be one cloudy day.

By 0820 I was back on the roads leaving Lonavala behind riding towards Pune... I simply love the small length of Ghat that comes up just after you leave the Expressway intersection on the NH-4... The hills are a welcoming sight into Pune... I knew from studying the maps that I had to ride until Shivaji Nagar and then take left onto Solapur road... but before that I had to take care of the chain trouble... It was early morning (9:30 am) on a Dasara day... and I couldnt find any shops open... After asking quite a few Bike showroom guys and a few mechanics, I finally found one mechanic shop in Pimri, who had just woken up... Mind you I had been searching for a mechanic since Dehu road...

A boy of about 12-13 years of age adjusted the chain and oiled it as I had a chat with a guy on a Splendour, he was sharing with me a trouble he had with his Thunderbird wherein he had replaced his clutchplate to an endurance clutchplate (God knows what does that mean...) And on his way from Aurangabad to Pune his clutch got seized and he slipped and fell... I bid goodbye to Pune by 11:00 and after asking a few rickshawallas I was well on my way cruising towards Solapur... My second break was for lunch just ahead of Bhigwan at about 12:05 pm The roads until then had been very smooth but the ride had been really tiring since I didn’t make any regular breaks... I had only covered under 250 km and was really exhausted... that is when I realised I could not make the entire 750 today and had to take a break somewhere... While having my lunch of Aloo mutter and Tandoor roti, another person comes in from Solapur side on a 125-135 cc bike makes a stop to have lunch at the same place... He strikes a conversation with me noticing my number plate... He tells me he is going to Andheri... I tell him I m travelling to hyderabad... He tells me that he has also been travelling from Hyderabad, had taken a stopover somewhere in between and that he also took off from Hyderabad the earlier evening. He tells me to take stop at Solapur... to which I say riding 350 km the next day would be a bit too much for me... and that i wanted to be as close to Hyderabad as possible but i wanted to make the stop on this side of the border... which is when he suggested i should halt at one of the lodges in Umarga... So it was decided... to ride up to Umarga for the day and then take rest for the night and then ride the remaining distance early the next morning... how simple did the plan seem then... but little did I now the next 300km were going to be the most eventful and toughest ride I had made until then... The roads between Bhigwan and Solapur, in parts, are horrid to say the least...

They are littered with potholes and at times the road is a giant pothole itself... At 3:15 pm it started raining heavily and I quickly took shelter under the nearest building I could see...

I took off from that place after a good 40 minutes that is when the rain subsided... In the mean time i was informed by a gentleman that Umarga was about 80 km from that spot and it was very uncertain if i would reach that place tonight... since there was a thunderstorm rising up between Chakur and Umarga... I didnt pay much heed to his comment but rode on after the rain stopped... But I had to stop again twice on the route for I wasnt even prepared for slightest of a wet drive...

At about 1645 hours I just looked up at the skies because it was really getting dark and I am bit wary of riding in the dark... And a circular formation among the clouds caught my eye... I hurriedly parked the bike aside and removed my digicam out of the hip pouch to catch the peculiar formation... It is then that a passing by herdsman advised me to take shelter in the building across the road... I initially paid no heed to his advice and continued to fiddle with my camera... It is then that he added that it is a hospital and I should take shelter there in the rain... "Paus lai daandgaa haay..." (the rain is mighty strong) He was right within seconds it started to pour heavily... I managed to click a few pics of the spinning clouds and of the oncoming curtain of rain as well...

The thundering accompanied with the lightening was so loud I had to cover my ears to prevent myself from going deaf (this is not an exaggeration) And the lightening was flashing all around the hemispherical solid angle… I waited in the hospital hostel wing for a good 25 minutes before it subsided and was back on my way...

It was close to 6:00 pm now and I had to cover another 50 km before I reached Umarga... Riding in the dark clouded atmosphere was really scary... As I passed Naldurg and entered a short Ghatmarg I just glanced to my left over the ghat ridge and was pleasantly startled to see patterned ups and downs on the adjacent rock face unlike that of a natural cliff...

It is then that I remembered of having read about the magnificent Naldurg fort... In that dark environment and with anxiety of reaching Umarga before it went pitch dark, I carried on without a second glance, promising that on my way back, I would give that medieval marvel the time it rightly deserved. Just a few kilometres off Naldurg... as I was switching my HL high/low suddenly the HL went off and my engine got cut off... that is when I steadily realised to my horror the calamity into which I had thrown myself... I exactly knew what was wrong with my bike the moment the HL went off… so there was no point in trying to kick start it... but with my limited techie knowledge and the tendency of non-pro mechanics to put their hands up when dealing with the bike’s internals... I was pondering on whether to leave the bike in the shrubbery/fields and hitch a ride to Umarga and then come back in the morning with a mechanic… at the same time i was thinking about the reception that i would be missing the next day... at first i couldnt even hitch a ride.. then a villager on a cycle came in towards me... i made a hand gesture and asked him to stop... it is from him that i came to know that the nearest town Jalkot was about 1 km just across the hillock in front of us... It was he who got down from his cycle and encouraged me to push the motorcycle up that hillock for more than 1.1 km (I checked it on the tripmeter on the way back)... and found a mechanic "Kashinath" in front of the PP in Jalkot...

Initially he was hesitant to touch the bike... but then after me having explained the problem to him and with some tough words from the owner of the Oil/parts shop, he got to work... he quickly replaced the blown fuse with the spare one (thats the first time i came to know that they have spare fuses :P) but having gone just a few metres up the highway it blew once again... that is when i explained the entire problem to him once again as I explain it to you now: "See before the start of this trip... I had this obsession of putting in a higher wattage bulb so that i would have better sight in the night... although i had no plans of riding in the night... I had gone to a lot of trouble into modifying my BA20d holder into a H4 bulb socket fit and in the process cut open all of the three wires in two different places each... finally it all resulted into the hot wire for the high beam being shorted to body of the bulb(ground), hence the blown fuse... after the problem was completely rectified this time i took off for Umarga (25 km) in the pitch darkness... I followed a tempo (probably a TATA 407) until Umarga chowk running at 40kph all the way... took me quite sometime... I booked myself a room in Dattaraj lodge for the night...

I was so exhausted at that time that I bought a pack of cigarettes which i thought i would have with a cup of tea and go to sleep... The room was pretty shitty but for INR 150 a day i was getting a secure place to rest for me as well as GadGad and that was fine with me... plus the place was a daru kaa adda (something like Hotel Descent from Jab We Met) so what do you expect? :P



The tea and two ciggis with one 15g pack of Lays and i was fast asleep... I had slept at 9:30 pm but i was up by 2:30 pm dont know how... i had decided to take off by 4:30 so that i reach hyderabad by 8:00-8:30.. but to my surprise as i went down with my bags packed i found that the lodge had been locked up (for security reasons) after a lot of shouting and banging on the grills i gave up... smoked two more cigarettes as i waited for time to pass by... At about 5:45 am these guys wake up and open up the shutters... I leave the Umarga Petrol pump after filling up the tank at 0600 hours and i reach Ani's place at 1000 hours covering 225 km... I can say for sure I must have covered the 200 in 3 hours and the last 25 km in the city must have taken me 1 hour... This is to say least about AP roads... they are simply awesome... :)