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The biker and a highway, I’ve often wondered about this timeless fascination of Rider, Machine and Road. The highway is a biker’s ‘space of nirvana’- if you could call it that.
Even as a kid I loved the roads. If it was a bus I had to have the window seat, or if it was a car I fought for the front seat so I could watch road ahead. When kids my age were busy with marbles, ‘gilli danda’ or spinning tops. I’d quietly slip away and ‘borrow’ my dad’s bicycle to explore a new road.
So much has changed, so many milestones passed in this journey called “Life”, but my fascination with highways refuses to fade.
I’ve often pondered about this obsession. What is this magnetic pull of a biker and a road? Why are we drawn again and again to the harshest terrains of Leh and Spiti? Are we challenging ourselves to push the boundaries, raising the bench marks with each ride?
Or is it the breathtakingly mesmerizing beauty of a place as close to Heaven on Earth as we can possibly get?
There are so many kinds of highways we go through. From the arrow straight six laners of the GQs which could sometimes put us to sleep, to the ‘thrill a minute’ hairpins with their adrenalin rush or through deep forest reserves which could fool you with their silence and then jolt you with an elephant across the road.
There are the quaint narrow roads, meandering through villages, green fields and meadows, across rickety bridges from another era built on slow flowing rivers and streams. Roads which make us slow down- our bikes our breath and our heartbeats- just to revel in the glorious views around us. How many times have we just pulled over and leapt in the air just for the pure joy of the moment??
There is joy when we explore a new road. The expectations scroll down like watching a move the first time. What comes next? What’s around the next bend? Wonder where that
road leads? Destination takes a back seat and the journey leads.
Then there’s another kind of joy on a “been there, done that” road. The road we’ve traveled so many times but just love its familiarity. We know there’s a bridge just around the next turn and a sign board reading “Welcome To….” a little later, and we know there’s just 28k.m to go to reach the obscure little tea shop which served the best tea ever. And the pleasure we feel as the little shop comes into view and pull over and park your bike under a giant old tree and the pain when we see the familiar scar on the bark where some idiotic moron has cut his stupid name on the bark of such a beautiful tree.
A smile from Raju the ‘tea maker’, a hot cup of the best and he asks “Traveling again sir?” “Yes brother, many miles to go before I sleep”.
Cheers Guys & Ride Safe
P.S: A small “road show” of my some of our pics.
Even as a kid I loved the roads. If it was a bus I had to have the window seat, or if it was a car I fought for the front seat so I could watch road ahead. When kids my age were busy with marbles, ‘gilli danda’ or spinning tops. I’d quietly slip away and ‘borrow’ my dad’s bicycle to explore a new road.
So much has changed, so many milestones passed in this journey called “Life”, but my fascination with highways refuses to fade.
I’ve often pondered about this obsession. What is this magnetic pull of a biker and a road? Why are we drawn again and again to the harshest terrains of Leh and Spiti? Are we challenging ourselves to push the boundaries, raising the bench marks with each ride?
Or is it the breathtakingly mesmerizing beauty of a place as close to Heaven on Earth as we can possibly get?
There are so many kinds of highways we go through. From the arrow straight six laners of the GQs which could sometimes put us to sleep, to the ‘thrill a minute’ hairpins with their adrenalin rush or through deep forest reserves which could fool you with their silence and then jolt you with an elephant across the road.
There are the quaint narrow roads, meandering through villages, green fields and meadows, across rickety bridges from another era built on slow flowing rivers and streams. Roads which make us slow down- our bikes our breath and our heartbeats- just to revel in the glorious views around us. How many times have we just pulled over and leapt in the air just for the pure joy of the moment??
There is joy when we explore a new road. The expectations scroll down like watching a move the first time. What comes next? What’s around the next bend? Wonder where that
road leads? Destination takes a back seat and the journey leads.
Then there’s another kind of joy on a “been there, done that” road. The road we’ve traveled so many times but just love its familiarity. We know there’s a bridge just around the next turn and a sign board reading “Welcome To….” a little later, and we know there’s just 28k.m to go to reach the obscure little tea shop which served the best tea ever. And the pleasure we feel as the little shop comes into view and pull over and park your bike under a giant old tree and the pain when we see the familiar scar on the bark where some idiotic moron has cut his stupid name on the bark of such a beautiful tree.
A smile from Raju the ‘tea maker’, a hot cup of the best and he asks “Traveling again sir?” “Yes brother, many miles to go before I sleep”.
Cheers Guys & Ride Safe
P.S: A small “road show” of my some of our pics.
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