Aparajith

He said the same thing to us too!! Guess he is used to meeting a lot of crazy bikers on this route now!!

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Democracy is when 2 wolves and a sheep meet to decide who is for dinner. Liberty is when the sheep has a gun.

rachitkohli

haha..!! that could be true..!! but his tea & parotha was nice..!

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..»».. I will rather ride my Bike thinking about God, then sitting in a Temple thinking about my Bike.. »»..

Mumbai - Leh - Mumbai June '09 :On xBHP: Ride With me to Leh

Blog : Mumbai - Leh - Mumbai : 21 Days, 6500kms. Journey to Heaven..June'09

GreatIndianRide - West India on a 110cc for over a month

2nd, Mumbai-Leh-Mumbai : July'11 (blog coming soon)

kirosh_03

Posting on behalf of Xinfii.

Day 1/15 - A rest day in Delhi

Delhi is one of the oldest metros in India and has quite a history. Not to forget the nature of a lot of people who wait for you to make the slightest mistake for them to take control of the situation. Kiran had been in this place recently for a few months and had experienced a lot of such situations. Taking his guidance, we decided to take a pre-paid taxi to a nearby location so that we could take some rest for the night. The queue was quite long and took us a good half an hour for our turn to come. We had to wait for a bigger car to dump the entire luggage we had.

Having got one, we asked the driver to take us to a cheap hotel just to stay for the night and move out early in the morning. Trouble began. The cabbie refused to take us to any hotel that cost less than 2000 for the night. He continued to argue saying that there was no such place in the area that would cater to our budget. Unable to find alternatives so late in the night, we finally landed in a place a little later than midnight who agreed to charge us 1500 if we checked out before 7AM. We ordered some food, gobbled them up and still continued to try and reach the bike transportation guy. Quite unsuccessful, we fell asleep very soon.

At about half past five in the morning, the crazy frog ring tone started ringing. The nature of this ring tone is that it is highly irritating and continues to ring until the battery charge lasts. Getting up, we decided to make it to the godown of the packers and movers and try and catch hold of the fellow. I called up one of my friends in Hyderabdad to get some Internet help over the phone. He figured out the location and address for us. About 15 minutes before we could leave, we got a call from the transportation fellow informing us that the bikes had arrived. Jumping with joy, we were more bothered about the fact that the bikes had reached rather than the fact that the idiot had been fooling around for about a week.

Kiran called up and arranged for a taxi that was waiting for us outiside. It was 15 minutes past 7 when we walked out of the room. The bugger at the reception charged us an extra 250 bucks for that. That wasn’t all. When we checked the bill, the food was about 900 bucks. We just had 12 rotis, 2 subjis and a 2 liter aerated drink. The drink was a desi cola, for which he charged 200 bucks. Fed up of everything that was happening, we settled the bill and moved out.

The taxi ride lasted for about half an hour and ended somewhere in the outskirts of Delhi where some container lorries where parked. Our bikes were parked in a corner, all covered with the packaging material. Paying off the cabbie, we unpacked the bikes and checked them for any damages. Allen’s Thunderbird and Kiran’s Karizma refused to start. My Pulsar 220 and Apar’s Apache RTR came to life with the push of a button. It was then that we realized that all the fuel had been taken out of the bullet and the ZMA. Both the 220 and RTR were fuel injected and the crooks didn’t know how to steal the fuel. I took Apar with me to get some fuel for both the bikes. As I rode the 220, I realized that one of the wires was disconnected and there was a small rattling noise under the fairing. I knew this couldn’t be something serious, however wanted to take it to the Probiking Service station for a quick check.



Loading the entire luggage, we headed straight to the fuel station nearby and fill the tanks a little bit and to have Apar’s bike checked for emission control. Our plan was to meet Imran, a member of Delhi xBhp, who had been guiding us a bit in Delhi so far. His place was in Noida, which was about an hour’s drive though the traffic. We missed each other a little bit in the traffic, but managed to regroup and make it to Imran’s place by 11. He was waiting there to head out with us for breakfast. After quickly unloading the bags and refreshing, Imran took us to a south Indian restaurant nearby where we had nice dosas and idlis.

Heading back home, we met up with couple of other xBhpians who gave us good company. LP was one of them, who accompanied me to the nearby Probiking Service station. The service engineers there didn’t understand anything other than Hindi or Marathi. I was finding it hard to communicate to the service engineer on what the problem was, and that’s exactly where LP helped me out. However, the service engineer took his sweet own time to investigate. There was bad news. He said that the battery had drained out and the starter clutch had an issue. Without much choices left, we agreed to leave the vehicle for over 6 hours for the issues to get resolved. It was now clear that we would have to start the trip only the next day. Meanwhile, we spent time at Imran’s home charting out maps and other plans for the trip. Later in the evening, we collected the bike and met up with a few other xBhpians for dinner. Heading home, we packed all the stuff and hit the bed.




As bad luck might have it, there was a power cut. But for Allen and Apar, the rest of us found it almost impossible to sleep. The room didn’t have too much air circulation and forced us to move out. We sat outside the entire night and it was about time to leave.

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All men dream, but not equally. Those that dream at night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act upon their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. - T. E. Lawrence

Kriss, ELD, and Wonderboy, you guys will always be remembered.

kirosh_03

Text: Xinfii

Day 2/15 - Delhi to Mandi – 500 kms – 3 AM to 8:30 PM

It was 2:30 in the morning. Those in the bed got up and joined the rest in the final packing and loading. Refreshing and gearing up, we bid goodbye to our sweet host Imran and officially started the trip with a delay of 1 day. Kiran led the way through the dark city streets to a fuel station. We filled up all tanks to the brim and continued our search for the highways. Kiran and Allen led the way, with Apar and I following the two. This pretty much remained the same order throughout the trip for various reasons at various times. I didn’t have a great map on my GPS, but I had setup a user trail from Delhi to Chandigarh, that helped me follow the route to a fairly good extent.



All excited, we forgot to worry about the sleepless night that we just crossed and continued to gradually improve speeds and started munching miles. After about and hour of riding, we had reached the proper highway where Apar and myself chose to pick up the faster options. At some point, we stopped by a dhabha only to realize that Allen and Kiran were missing. We called them to find out that they had stopped a little earlier as Allen was sleeping and was finding it hard to ride. We decided to halt at a nearby ‘Jhil Mil’ dhabha to get some sleep. We spoke to person there and got some space to take rest for about an hour and a half. I can’t forget to mention the fact that we shared the space with some truck drivers!



When we came out of that space, it was bright and sunny. Apar and Kiran were watching the bikes and bags for us, while Allen and I had got ourselves some sleep. We reenergized with some tea and packed our saddles again. The idea was to reach Manali for the night.

After crossing Panipat and Ambala, we were riding focused towards Chandigarh. On the way, we met another biker, Pankaj, heading in the same direction. We were excited to know that he was riding to Leh as well. His original plan was to ride with a couple of his friends, but they couldn’t make it for different reasons. He tagged along with us, as we entered the region around Chandigarh. There was a speed limit of 60 kmph enforced on the highway with cameras and cops strictly monitoring the traffic. We were warned multiple times by Kiran and Pankaj about it, and it took us quite some time to cross the city.





By that time, Apar and I were going down on energy without proper sleep. We decided to go into the city to get some Red Bull, when the others would proceed through the highway. The two of us went in and figured out a shop to get 4 cans very quickly. But then, we realized we had got ourselves lost inside the city. The GPS was a little helpful in getting us back to where we started. But we had to reach the highway from there to sync up with the others. The people of the city themselves seemed so confused with the routes that they kept guiding us in opposite directions. We finally managed to get back on track and meet with our other half at a dhabha for lunch. Meanwhile, Pankaj had parted and moved on. His trip was much shorter than ours and therefore didn’t have much time to lose. We wrapped up lunch pretty quickly as well thinking of the time we had lost thus far.





Apar and I stuck together all the time, though we had no idea about the other two most of the time. We were moving towards the evening as we slowly started experiencing inclination on road. We had a feeling we were nearing the foothills. At a small town called Ropar, there was a deviation to head to Manali. It was closely followed by a railway crossing where the two of us waiting for the train to pass. That was when we got a call from Kiran telling us that his bike was fuming under the tank and had stalled. Not so happy to hear the news, I got his location and headed back to that point. I instructed him to get hold of Allen and bring him back as well. On the way, I mentally registered any opportunity for s mechanic and was happy to find positive signs. At some point, I saw Kiran standing on the opposite side of the road, pretty terrified.

He explained to me that he just filled up his tank and that it was fuming from under. He switched off the ignition and was thinking what to do. Allen arrived meanwhile and we tried switching back the ignition. Fumes reappeared. Allen went to get hold of a mechanic while the three of us moved the bikes and luggage to a much shady location. After quite a while Allen returned alone saying that nobody was ready to come over to fix a faired bike. We were left with no choice but to try fixing the issue ourselves.



With the knowledge and experience we had, we put some team effort to strip off the tank and analyze the root cause. We found that the fuel level sensor had a short. We snapped it out and insulated it to fix the issue. Putting things back together, Kiran was ready to ride again, except that his fuel level indication wouldn’t work.



We crossed Ropar together and started to ascend. We were nearing sunset and it had been a tough ride so far. The only thing that kept exciting us ware the small valleys that kept exposing themselves now and then. Taking breaks more often than we ever wanted to, we pushed it hard to reach a place called Mandi. This place was a 100 kms before Manali, which was our intended destination. Unable to ride any further, we found out a nice place to stay for the night. Food was decent, but I hardly remembered its taste due to the tiredness. Finishing it quickly, I put all the gadgets for charging and hit the bed.



To be continued...

__________________
All men dream, but not equally. Those that dream at night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act upon their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. - T. E. Lawrence

Kriss, ELD, and Wonderboy, you guys will always be remembered.

Aryan

Wonderful stuff. Keep it coming.

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...in search of that perfect world - My Travel Blog :)

xinfii

@Kiran: Thanks for doing this. I've already lost all my patience publishing it at another place.

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kri$hna

I have just completed going through "that Another Place" where you have posted the whole 15 days ... awesome logs and pics buddy !!

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-- kri$ --

kriss, you will be remembered forever.

darkknight

Heyy apar...I thot you had taken R15 ....and I was ready with my posse of questions

saw the pics and no R15

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Aparajith

Yeah, I took the RTR Fi. A much better choice compared to the R15 to be frank and IMHO. I would have had to change the R15's tires and also with around 20 kg luggage strapped at the saddle, it would have been tough manouevering the bike!

__________________
Democracy is when 2 wolves and a sheep meet to decide who is for dinner. Liberty is when the sheep has a gun.

falcon

did you use normal mineral oil or you used synthetic oil, and plz suggest in this regard whats best for such type of rides
Thanks