Preparing for the GIR

xBhp had done some long rides in the past with not much at stake. We had done the HX ( Himachal Xplorer series ) which was primarily coordinated by Bunny, co-founder of xBhp. They were 2000 kms odd trips and involved members going on a group ride to the Himalayas. Besides this the members used to go on solo / group rides from various parts of the country. In short, everything was a low key affair – that is if you were to compare with the ambition of the GIR. It was 20,000 odd kilometers in 110 Days with exotic two – wheelers and an audience which had brickbats, critics, friends, family, media, corporates, bikers, executives, students and most importantly the xBhp members for which this trip was being organized. The aim was to set the club apart from the horde of clubs mushrooming every day in India aiming to be the first in something in the motorcycle arena.

With so much at stake it was of course time to put the old adage, Man proposes, God disposes, on the test.

The Initial Idea

The idea of the trip first came to Sundeep Gajjar ( Sunny ), founder of xBhp in 2003. It seemed an impossible task but nevertheless he started working towards it. Only two people knew of it – Bunny, the co – founder of xBhp and Tiger ( Yogesh Sarkar ) the then super moderator of xBhp. Both were promised of a sure shot entry ticket if any such ride materialized down the years. That was all in fun, who would have known that one day xBhp would pull it off for real…

The initial idea was simple, to tour India on Superbikes and to connect the maximum people offline and online.

The main problem would always be finance. The problem with Sunny was his eccentricity and his habit of doing something the best way possible – at least of paper. The best things meant a lot of money. However, mind you the term ‘best’ is always relative. We decided to a take a 1000RR while the best could be a MV Augusta F4 for someone else. But still we decided to set the standard by choosing a Superbike, two of then recently introduced Italian motoscooters by Kinetic, a Korean Streetfighter and a backup four wheeler.

Let us remind you that it was still not decided known that if we xBhp would actually manage to get the bikes it wanted and mentioned above for the trip. In fact nothing was sure – the finances, the route, the bikes, the riders and the backup plan.

The Sponsors

It is amazing how many enemies one can make once you get successful and start getting sponsors. In India, sponsorship is looked upon as a free lunch for people who also want sponsorships but are too lazy to go about earning them. For us sponsorship is a salary paid out by any company to do something different and which cannot be categorized as a recurring / ordinary job.

Sundeep actually left his job in one of the top animation studios in Mumbai to go about planning the trip and acquiring the necessary sponsors. It took 1 year to fine tune the proposals and identify the corporates who would be interested. Many rejects were there, but the very few who showed some interest were pursued.

Finally in mid 2006, xBhp got the sponsors it required to execute the trip the way it was intended to be. But let us remind you, getting sponsorship is one thing, executing the trip successfully and delivering what we promised to our members and corporates was something that no amount of money could buy!

‘Man proposes, God disposes’ was still ringing in our heads!

Choosing the right people

Be it any job, it finally has to be done by a person who has got his own personality and preferences. It was indeed a challenging task to select the core riders in the trip. The team had to be such that there are minimum frictions and maximum cooperation in achieving the goal of completing the trip successfully. From our viewpoint successful meant :

- minimum accidents and in case of an accident, minimum damage and fastest recovery
- maximum coverage of the areas that we went to : photos, videos and travelogue
- maximum sharing : being social, interacting with maximum people and updating blogs, media

Application was floated on xBhp.com and members were invited to be a part of the GIR core riding team. Riding experience was of course the primary requirement, but the real points were earned by their photography, videography, writing abilities or any special skill that might aid the trip as a whole ( web designing, social networking etc ). The final list of people that were chosen were :

Sundeep Gajjar, Bunny Punia, Krishnendu Kes, Ashish Divakaran, Sunil Gupta and Gurpreet Singh.

The support staff was equally important if not more. We had to take a backup vehicle driver and a backup mechanic. After a lot of problems we found the god sent Gurjant Singh from Chandigarh with his Tata 207. He was not your ordinary driver. He had fought with his family a whole night before announcing his decision to go out with us and see India. This was the quality that we found, one in a million!

The backup mechanic role was played by Vinayak Dalvi, the head mechanic of Delhi for Kinetic. He was another gem, good natured and always helpful.

So this was our team.

The Audience

Having an audience was as important as doing our things right. In fact the underlying motive of xBhp has always been to unite the maximum number of people with biking. And now that we were doing something on a national stage we wanted to do share it with the maximum number of people.

Our audience was divided over multiple mediums: The internet ( blogs and articles at xbhp.com, rediff.com, oktatabyebye.com ), Print media ( BIKE India magazine, CIRCLE Magazine and newspaper releases ), Broadcast Media ( Television releases ), pamphlets, presentation in corporate offices, educational institutions and plain word of mouth.

The daily jobs of the riders were riding – blogging – sleeping. For 108 Days.

This website is also a testimony to the fact that xBhp did a trip to share, not to just do it and forget about it. We respect the people and members who thought well for us. This website is a small gesture of appreciation towards them.

Gathering the Stuff :

The final days before the trip was about to begin were very hectic. From sourcing the Superbike, to getting the spares, tools and everything else for the vehicles was making everyone anxious. There was a lot of shopping done, forecasts made and contingency planning done. But the phrase ‘Man proposes, God disposes’ was still lingering in our heads.

There was stuff coming from everywhere, Kinetic, Red Bull, Apple, Castrol, Angels Racing, Canon, Nokia… It was raining cool things. But we knew that complacency could be fatal, the real test lied ahead on the road…

From painting the helmets, to painting the Honda Fireblade, there were endless things to be prepared.

Read the books

GIR Tees

Painting the helmets

More tshirts

Stuff and more stuff...

Preparing the online material

In the trip

The trip started on a strange incident. The Blaze stopped just two kilometers after we started from Qutab Minar in Delhi. It was funny, but the petrol had ran out in it! The immediate problem facing us was the backup vehicle. The vehicle was shambles and the driver was a scared to death man. Scared of going to Leh. This was sorted out when we finally hooked up with Gurjant Singh in Chandigarh. This was our luckiest break in GIR.

There were many problems that we faced in GIR : the accident in Jaipur, money problems, accident in Trivandrum, spares problem, frictions between the riders, health problems ( we cannot forget that Sunny, Bunny and Sunil were sitting in a row wearing GIR tshirts in an eye hospital in Bangalore infected with Conjunctivitis, it was hilarious sight ), bad roads, bad food ( many times we just used to eat a few sweets of a roadside sweet shop! ).

It was definitely fun preparing for the GIR as much as it was actually riding in it. It made us all better human beings and taught us one thing – there is no free lunch, and after having your lunch you have to digest it too which infact means that one can get anything he wants, the key is hard work.