A 2666 Kms Ride .... What an ecstasy it was....!!!

It was around 7:00 on a calm Thursday evening (24-09-09 to be more specific), I was walking out of Barista holding two mugs of coffee in my hand, one for Gautham and another for me. Gautham, Dr. Venky and Prakash had come to our usual gathering spot in Besant Nagar to give KD and me a send-off for the ride. KD and I started from KD's place at around 9:00, all packed and geared up.

The ride begins...I was pretty new to long rides and most of all, this one was monstrous. Getting out of the city was the most difficult part. It was around 11:00 when we decided to stop for dinner at Vellore. Till then, it was a plain ride. We quickly finished out dinner and started in another 45min.

We thought of making it to Bangalore in the night so that we could ride with Mahek and his wife from there on. We were pretty-much doing 100-110 kmph speeds but trust me, overtaking KD's 500 was a hard job. At one point, KD was pretty-much ahead of me and all of a sudden, my Thunderbird switches off. There was all smoke fuming under my seat, I had no clue of what was happening. I pulled over to the left side of the road, luckily near a petrol bunk. By then, KD had come back searching for me. KD guessed some problem with the battery part and asked me to open the side case. As immediate as it could be, I unlock the side case and BOOOOM… battery burst right in my face. I can see nothing from one eye, my whole face started burning, it was one hell of a time. I quickly grabbed water from KD and washed my eye and Thank God! My eye was clear again. We pulled over my bike to a bright corner in the bunk. Fiddled with the battery and connections around to figure out that there has been a short-circuit on the wire connecting the negative terminal of the battery with the frame and the starter motor. One thing we surely understood was that my battery was super heated! KD, then had a plan, he opens his 500's battery box and we try to start my bike with his battery... Hurray! it works. We waited for an hour or so for my battery to cool down, quickly taped all the sort-circuited wires fixed my battery back and we were back on the road. "That was on hell of an incident!" I told myself.

It was around 4:00 am when we reached this wonderful place called "DSR Grand" in Krishnagiri. It was one amazing room that we got ourselves to put up for the night. It was super spacious/good/clean and a lot more worth than 500 Rs for the night. Meanwhile, KD asked Mahek and his wife to start their ride in the morning regard-less of we joining them. We did around 220 odd km the first day.

Day 2, Friday! I was little more exited than the first day. I was 10:00 in the morning, we geared up and started out ride again from Krishnagiri. We passed through Bangalore to catch up the NICE road to ride towards Tumkur. We grabbed some biscuits and puff for the break-fast when we were in the out-scirts of Bangalore. Roads were pretty great for a copula 100 odd km. On our way we stopped at a petrol bunk to top-up my battery acid as most of it got spilt the previous night. By 3-ish in the after noon we reached Chitradurga, spotted a good-looking hotel and stopped for lunch, spent an hour or so there. We were planning to reach Kholpur by night, and we had a huge distance to cover. After a little while the roads stated getting worse. Oops! I shouldn't call it worse, they were actually exiting to ride after a long stretch of highways. We went on and on, stopped in copula places in between to get us some tea and biscuits. We found some hotel to put-up for the night at around 20km from Kholapur at around 11 in the night. That was a pretty long day, we did around 800 odd km. Had dinner and a good night sleep.

Day 3, Saturday! The day of the event. Started at around 7-ish in the morning. Mahabaleshwar was around 180 km from Kholapur. It was all plain, good highways again. We reached Sitara in copula hours, from there it was little bit for village roads and then ghat roads. The village road was pretty exiting with soft curves. I was keeping very close with KD to be sure that I dont miss him. All at once, the ghat roads start. The first curve, KD takes it deep and brakes a little and I just realize that I was too close to brake as I might start skidding, took it little straight, went into the bushes on the side of the road and stopped. Oh... KD was already gone, I pulled myself back onto road and started. One thing I wanted to be sure about from then, I would for any case not go so close onto KD's bike. Curve over curve, my excitement started building up. There were no hairpin-bends as such but the deep curves were great. On the curves KD zooms on, and I take my cool time to see understand the curve and take it. I havent done much of ghat roads yet, I told myself.

At 11-ish we reached this place called Swiss Country, we go park our Enfields next to 35 odd Roadshaker Enfields. At once, all of them gather around us, not a single person I knew of, apart from KD and Sachin. In no time got myself introduced to fellow riders. We then went up the room alloted for us, dumped our luggage, freshened up and gathered up at the conference room. It was Roadshaker's 8th anniversary, thats a lot of riding time. Sachin briefed up the Club's achievements over the years and the plans for the upcoming year. It was then continued with Roadshakers presentation. Well, I was totally amazed looking the the number of rides they did...Oh man! I told myself that I would need to do a lot more rides with V40 to be on the same page with them. Next in the list was V40's presentation, it kinda seemed pretty small after theirs.

Presentation was followed by lunch, a pretty good one though. Most of were in semi-sleepy state, to swirl up, Roadshakers had planned few events. Fist in the line was "figure of eights", I shouldnt call it eight though, it was a double-eight in reality. Riders were split in teams, I was in Ram's team. One thing we messed, we picked up Thunderbird for the event. Only Sachin in our team was able to make it without putting his foot down through eight. Thank God! at least he made it, I put my leg down 4 times, but I had a brother, Ram managed to put his leg down 11 times. Next event was push an Enfield up the ramp, trust me, its firstly hard to push an Enfield for 20mts and that too up the ramp, super-hard! We tried our level best but there were teams faster than us :) Up next was slow race, two from each team would participate in the slow race and the first of the two's time would be taken into account. Some how we managed to make it first. Antony and Mishal joined us by then, I would say more of V40 presence there! Followed by a game in the swimming pool and party in the night.

Day 4, Sunday! We planned to start with the rest of the group, ride the ghat roads and start our way back from there. I quickly had my break-fast and roamed around the place a little bit to click some photos. By the time I was back, KD was awake. We quickly geared up and started with the rest of the group. The plan was to meet up at a view point on our way back to click some group photos. First of all, the view was spectacular! Second of all, sight of all 40 odd riders in the view point was amazing! Anthony, Mishak, KD and me greeted a bye to everyone ad started our way. Now, this was one incident I would desperately wanna talk about. We stated riding the ghat roads, KD was leading, me in between and Anthony sweeping. I was pretty much exited riding the ghat roads as there were fantastic. At one point, Anthony overtook me and a bus ahead of me. Well, I tried to overtake the bus for another copula curves, was a hard thing. The next scene I remember was me siting on the side wall of the ghat road and Anthony & Mishal standing in front of me asking me how I was feeling, was I hurt, did I sleep off and skid??? I had no clue to any of those questions. I literally had no memory of what happened. I wasnt hurt at all, a big thanks to the V40 Club for the riding gear rule, first time I appreciated a rule! I got up took a quick stroll to see if I was good enough to be walking. By then they had pulled my bike from the road and KD was on it fixing. I dont know for what happened, but I skid the a stretch of 6-8 mts across the road. I asked KD and Anthony how they came back to get me, they said they had past some distance, stopped by as I wasnt there behind them, and came back searching for me. Firstly, I thought I slept off while riding, but then that seemed stupid as I was pretty excited riding and there was no chance that I could sleep off. Next what struck me was a blank-out. Oh...that was one incident I would never forget in my life. My bike was pretty much in riding condition, thanks to KD again. I was sure that I was out of the shock but I was thing back-n-fourth on what had happened that made me fall. My RPM meter was totally screwed up, tank had 3 dents, handle bar little bent and thats it. We started riding again, took some time to reach Sitara. Stopped over there to fix up my loose chain, oil top up for both KD and Anthony and food for all of us. Started at around 3-ish in the afternoon. Plan was to reach Hubli by night, around 400 odd km. It was a nice ride, with little bit of rain in few places on the way, we all liked it though. Reached Hubli at around 11-ish found place to stay, had some food and one good night sleep. That was a big day! Thanked KD, Anthony and Mishal for all the help, I dint say it to them though.

Day 5, Monday! Anthony and Mishal were planning to go to Yana from there, so they started a little early 8-ish. I woke up early greeted a bye to them had my brake-fast went back to room to see KD still sleeping :) We started from Hubli around 9-ish. After a little stretch of highways from Hubli, the bad roads started, both of us were excited and we started kinda off-roading. KD's bag fell off the bike a copula times, we said never mind, packed the bag again and stated ripping off the road in most patches ;). That was just another fun part of the ride. Dominic, Gautham and Bharani were in Ooty (looks like they got so freeked out that they couldnt make it to the Mahabaleshwar ride ;) they did Yearkad and Ooty over the past copula days). So we kinda thought we could meet up at Bangalore and ride together. But then, we had a sudden change of plan. KD and me thought of by-passing Bangalore by taking the Kolar route just to get rid of the highways (you know too much of highways makes it boring). And that one proved to be one hell of a route. Super-big speed breakers, sudden ghat roads, ups and downs in the road made it pretty exciting ride, but it made both us and our bikes tired. We stopped at Kolar for lunch at around 4-ish fixed a few thing on my bike (my chain guard had come off) and started back again. We took the old chennai-bangalore highway, trust me it was in pathetic condition. At on point, it was getting dark and I was on reserve for quite some time, pretty tensed up I go and ask KD he replies back saying he is on reserve too. Wow! I thought. Fortunately we found a petrol bunk in some 8 km. We tanked up and started. The road made me pretty slow, KD was able to do good speeds but I was pretty exhausted. We took 3.5 hrs to cover 90 odd km. We reached a village near Vellore, stopped had some tea and found our way onto the highways back again. We couldnt meet up with the other guys at Ranipet as they too got stuck on some bad roads on their way back and got delayed. We waved each other bye near Madhya Kailash and I was home by 11:30 in the night. We did 800 odd km that day I was badly exhausted, had my food and went back to bed.

So, that was the story about my 2666km Ride. I enjoyed it a lot!

G A N E S H