This is the story of 4 bikers who have decided to explore South East Asia on their motorcycles. They started off  from Mumbai and will be riding all the way to Singapore. In  the process they will cover 19000 km, 5 countries and 34 cities over 50 days.

This is what they have to say about the road so far!

Day 1: The flag off ceremony was overwhelming with a turnout of over 50 biker buddies, families and friends! We were absolutely thrilled and filled with great positive energy to propel us into the ride! Neil Lamba and Shailesh Kakrani were kind enough to support us all the way up to Igatpuri! Roads upto Indore were mostly brilliant and we adopted a very slow and easy going  pace in order to ensure that we stayed fresh and alert for the long 600 kms ahead. During the course of  the ride, Vivek Khanna realized that his cruise control wasn’t functioning and this raised a great concern. We contacted the Central Triumph dealership at Indore who instantly got into action and sent across one of their team members to collect us from the outskirts of Indore.

While it seemed impossible to rectify the issue, the technicians at Central Triumph took some exceptional efforts and managed to fix the issue and drop the bike back at our hotel and also do a regular check up on other bikes. Thank you Deepak Makhija and Mayank for your valiant efforts.

We were also greeted and welcomed by fellow biker buddy Dharmendra Jain, who made sure that our stay was comfortable and hosted a delicious dinner with some lip smacking authentic homemade food. It was a brilliant affair! Our choice of hotel i.e. Best Western, was a great choice with a comfortable stay and secure parking for all bikes! Day one was a great start to our ride which energized us to go ahead with full enthusiasm into the odyssey!

Day 2: Indore – Sanchi – Vidisha – Jhansi: Distance covered – 547 km

After our night stay at Indore, we were greeted by the friendly face of Dharmendra Jain, who was kind enough to escort us out of the city and point us in the right direction towards Jhansi. We decided in advance that in order to save time, we shall avoid taking a halt for lunch, and instead feast on some homemade theplas which Chetna Kapoor had very intuitively packed with her prior to the ride. The sense of satisfaction to eat some delectable food on the side of a highway with a cool breeze flowing is quite magical. It simply refreshes you whole heartedly and gives you all the boost you need to move ahead in your ride with full throttle.

While we were happily cruising on the highway, we happened to meet up with a very pleasant surprise, and realized that we were indeed crossing over the tropic of cancer! Much to our delight, we stopped and soaked in this fact and were amazed as to how one can find something so fascicating in the middle of nowhere!

Moving ahead, while crossing Sanchi, it dawned upon us that the very monumental figure i.e the Sanchi Stupa was actually just a stone’s throw away from us! We immediately jumped  this opportunity and eagerly rode to pay a visit to this heritage site! The Sanchi Stupa was a feast to the senses and we could cherish the calm and peace within the stupa that was built by King Asoka in honour of Lord Buddha and his disciples.

While we could not resist these halts, we were forced to extend our riding time into the night, and while we were well equipped with good lights, the cold caught us completely unawares ! We finally reached Hotel Jhansi and feasted on some delicious Indian cuisine which was the speciality of their in house restaurant. The secure parking for the bike put us at ease and allowed us to slip away into our warm beds, for some much deserved rest before we headed out into the next days ride!

Day 4: 658 kms KHUSHINAGAR – MUZZARPUR – DARBHANGA – PURNIA – SILIGURI

After a comfortable stay and a lavish breakfast at Royal Residency, Khushinagar, we decided to pay our respect and homage to the spiritual site of Lord Buddha’s remains. This is where he gave up his mortal body We soaked in the positive energies of the atmosphere and finally moved on towards our destination for the day with a real sense of serene and calm.

We were pleasantly greeted on the highway with a gentle chill in the air, along with a light fog that gave us a nice sight for the eyes.

The roads were smooth and pothole free, and encouraged us to gobble up the miles for the long distance that we had to cover. Just when we thought we were having a perfect run, we encountered a long 5 km traffic jam, right before Darbhanga, which included a very hostile environment due to a local child being crushed under a truck and sadly meeting his demise on the spot.

Due to this unfortunate incident, the local villagers shut the only bridge that connected us to our destination to Siliguri, with young children carrying sticks and stones and physically assaulting anyone who were trying intending to cross over.

After much deliberation, we decided to take an broken down internal route that would bypass the bridge, and took a chance to take this completely off beaten route. While this was a bit of a challenge for even the Tigers, it proved to be a herculean task for the Rocket 3 which found itself completely submerged under sand and had to be forcibly pushed out of those spots.

Finally we reached our road to victory, it was only to our amazement that even this Off Trail had been cordoned off by the locals with some very serious tension building up.

With commotion building up all around us, and unrequired attention being drawn towards us, we were in the thick of things and had to instantly come up with contingency plan to move out of that spot with a sense of Real urgency with threats from local village women suggesting that they Burn the bikes!

To our good fortune, we finally had a friendly local who offered us to take us through yet another alternate off trail route, a bare 4’ raised walking track on either side of fields with crop and water, the slightest mis maneuver could lead to the bikes plunging 4’ into the fields and resulting in the ride being terminated….

However….Having no other option, we just hoped for the best and took the plunge! With yet another stretch of very challenging sandy patches, we finally saw light at the end of the tunnel and bypassed the road block. We were short of words to thank that friendly local who literally was the Saviour for the day, and after thanking him profusely, we rapidly moved ahead towards Siliguri.

Having lost considerable amount of Day Light, we were again left with no choice but to continue riding into the night, and to YET again…. Find ourselves at another long jam at the Toll due to a great Truck pile up.

Our only way out, by the advise of the locals and truckers, we managed to go back between trucks and get to other side of the road. This is where the Rocket 3 went through a life threatening situation as there was a one feet drop between the crossing over to the other side.

However, luck was yet again with us as neither the bike for Doctor Rajaram were harmed and swiftly continued towards Siliguri at the slow and steady pace due to poor light conditions.

After some long grueling hours on the roads, we finally reached The Sinclairs property at Siliguri and caught up with an extremely seasoned world traveller, Panduranga Shenoy who would be giving us company towards the Myanmar stretch of our riding.

A long, eventful, tiring day finally came to an end, and we gave ourselves a well earned rest in the comfort of our cosy beds. 

DAY 5 – 0 kms REST DAY AT SILIGURI

After having crossed over from the states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradhesh and Bihar, we finally got our first and Well deserved day stop over at West Bengal at Siliguri.

While there is no official Triumph dealership in Siliguri, we pretty much got the same level of workmanship and technical know how through the steady and capable hands of Murthi, who proved to be a much needed relief to our bikes.

To our horror, the Rocket 3 had a severely congested fuel injector port, with terrible choke up of the Air Box as well. Had this problem not been identified by Murthi, the Rocket 3 would have certainly succumbed to this ailment and would have been impossible to rectify by any ordinary technician.

If this wasn’t enough, Vivek Khanna’s bike was diagnosed with a major oil leak, with the oil levels coming down to a dangerously low level, with a further shocker of the coolant reservoir cap also missing, resulting in yet again an unacceptable coolant level.

Samrat Kapoor’s bike also had a few rectifications that might have resulted into a complication further on, including, a loose chain. The entire first half of the day went into the proper care and corrections of all the bikes, and it goes without saying that Murthi was God sent, and his contribution towards getting our bikes back into line was priceless.

A vote of thanks to Panduranga, due to whom Murthi had flown down to Siliguri and given us this much needed help. During our stay at Siliguri, we were given a very warm welcome by Sanjay Saharan, a fellow rider who looked over our stay at the Sinclair’s hotel and also invited us to an authentic Nepali wedding during the night.

Having absolutely no appropriate clothing, for this function, we had to resort to wearing a simple t-shirt and tracks to an function where guests are dressed up to their best attire!

The scene was quite memorable, to find ourselves in the middle of a big fat wedding, decked up with nothing more than greetings and warm wishes!

However, Sanjay ensured that we were completely at ease, and not only introduced us to all the family members of the wedding but also ensure that we were made to feel as part of family!

Doctor Rajaram was completely absorbed into celebrations and even performed a song with the orchestra giving him a back up!

What a sight it was…. For Doctor to go beyond his comfort zone and shell out a melody infront of a live audience that were completely alien to him! We completely soaked in this experience and ended up with some delectable authentic buffet spread! After having thanked Sanjay for his efforts and warm hospitality, we settled into the night, for our next long ride to Khaziranga in Assam!

DAY – 6  SILIGURI – GUHAWATI – KAZHIRANGA DISTANCE – 686 KMS

Our original stop over for the night was Guwahati which we thought of over stretching to Kaziranga at the last moment as Guwahati was totally booked and had absolutely no hotel accommodation for us due to the city being the host for the South Asian games. We thought this was in a way, a blessing in disguise as we would be reducing our next riding by atleast 200 kms. After having rested for a full day in Siliguri we decided we are ready for this endurance run and go for it.

Having clearly understood the reality of the distance that we had to cover today, we chose to ride out early into the morning by 6 a.m. This day would also require us to adapt and synchronize ourselves to the riding style of our new member to our group i.e. Panduranag, who was known for his aggressive style of riding with great endurance of little or no halts whatsoever.

The ride set off with our regular riding formation with Vivek Khanna trailing Panduranga and followed by Samrat Kapoor and Doc, however in a short while we realised that that the gloriously smooth tar mac inspired Doc to take over the trail and sped ahead with Pandu with some remarkable speeds. VK and SK tagged together and kept with their halts for the nice scenic photographs which Doc and Pandu choose to give up for their need for speed. We crossed the magnificent Coronation Bridge.

Soon we came to bypass Guwahati where the the South Asian games were being hosted, we breaked for lunch at 3:00 pm realizing that we had a fair bit of distance yet to cover. As we exited Guwahati the 4 lane highway convulged into a single undivided carriageway.

Night fall was approaching and we soon lost complete day light. We realized that we were in the middle of a national park ( Jungle ) and were welcomed by a wild tusker who got startled by us. Soon we re grouped as Pandu and Doc had pulled over. We realized that we had a issue with the throttle cable not responding on Docs bike.

The bike still had to be ridden on no throttle we some how managed to reach our hotel at a worm crawling speed of 15 kmph. Borgos was a beautiful property totally which was completely unexpected. A true haven…. It had a slightly different approach from the main road as it was almost a kilometer further into the jungle passing through rickity wooden bridges enroute.

We had a issue to take care of prior to even checking in and that was getting Docs bike throttle working again. We took help from the hotel staff and called for a local mechanic to attend to the issue via remote advise from Murthi and Triumph dealership in Mumbai. They say letting a mechanic use his own judgement comes works best…Ganesh (the mechanic ) worked wonders by coming up with the idea of replacing the broken cable with a Bajaj Avenger throttle cable. Though we were not convinced we decided to go with the only option we had at that point of time as the closest dealership in Kolkata also did not have the required cable. Miraculously we were relieved with the result. The bike roared back into action and we breathed a sigh of relief else it would have gotten us into an extremely spot with a bike that is not fit to be ridden across the border to Myanmar!

Another eventful day came to a end with us collapsing in our bed looking forward to the next day!

Day 7 – Kazhiranga to Imphal Distance – 348 kms

Aware of some treacherous roads that we were going to face enroute our journey today, we decided to move out from our very impressive stay at bordos, our hotel at kazhiranga.

Both bikes and riders being well rested, we eagerly got seated onto our machines to head out into the chilly morning for the forest roads that would pave out the way for imphal!

While in assam, we were in for a great treat as the set of winding roads that we were covering had beautiful scenic tea estates on each sides, which literally just transported us into another world!

Post the short stint of those lovely roads, we were given a  wake up call as the balance stretch of roads that were to be covered today would invovle hi-altitude winding roads, that would expect a lot of rider’s input due to continuous downshifting of gears, engine braking and a great amount of steering!

While the distance of 350kms is really not a task on straight roads, however it is just another ball game all together when it comes to twisties, with narrow lanes and incoming traffic!

After moving out of assam, we crossed the enchanting state of nagaland which is named as the land of hills. The people of nagaland were all smiles and chirpy! They seemed to be free of the worries that the city people are troubled by.

They seemed to also have a keen sense for fashion and we were quite delighted to see the dressing sense that was quite modern with some really amazing hair do’s! While we were quite entertained with the sights and sounds of nagaland, we could not escape the fact of some terribe patches of roads, that just made us exert even more energy apart from the twisties that were tiring us already

Finally…. After what felt like an eternity, we reached flat land, and checked into our choice of hotel at imphal by the name of classic grande.

We must point out that classic grande was indeed a grand sight! With a massive parking lot, a huge lobby and some exceptional rooms and interiors.

The local enfield riding group also came by to give us pointers for our course of roads that we would take the following day.  A great bow of respect to edie and the rest of the boys from the enfield group of imphal and bob mc, for having taken out their time and giving their expert opinions, as noone else understands a bike than another biker!

 Knowing that we needed to take care of border formalties for our entry into myanmar the next day, we slept as early as we could, and awaited the much sought after visit into the land of white elephants….. Myanmar!

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