great pics man... upload that video as well.. if you can clip the sections where the road could be seen..

the roads are becoming good nowadays in this part

sunny aka konkal pulsar

hey, that is not g.t. Road .its durgapur expressway and it is very close to my home.
Hey rahul through which way you went to durgapur expressway is it through dakneshwar .

No from Kona Expressway-->NH6-->Dankuni Tollplaza-->Dur.Expway.

I guess.

wonderful,.
nice clicks by the way.
that wheel hugger really works ,i was really stunned to see it in action and the best part rs.100 only.
it was really nice talkin to u bluevolt.keep in touch.

The Gift A Dream Ride: Day 5: Bodh Gaya to Gurgaon; 1,103 kms, 19 hours

When I woke up in the morning I did not know how long the day was going to be. As per my plan, I was supposed to halt at Kanpur which was around 676 kms away, and then proceed to Ambala from Kanpur the day after that. But fate had other plans for me, though I did not know it at that time.

After a quick shower around 5.30am and eating whatever I could lay on hands on (which was Amul cool milk and energy bars btw), I packed my bags and went to my bike and started loading. After I was all set, I turned the ignition key to 'On' and thumbed the starter. The bike won't start. I though it was a bit funny since all the lights on the dash were glowing, which meant the battery wasn't dead. I tried again, and it still won't start. I got a bit concerned by this point, so I unpacked my netbook and went through the service e-manual which I had saved in the hard disk. It gave me no simple troubleshooting solution except a complex 'replace so and so part' kind of an advice. I was puzzled since the bike was working perfectly fine till the time I parked it and I had also covered it to avoid people fiddling around with it. It suddenly struck me that the saddle bag straps which go under the seat might have something to do with it, so I opened up the underseat storage and connected-disconnected the wires and moved them around a bit. After this small exercise, I press the starter and the engine comes to life. I was still unsure of the cause, because underseat wiring only connects the taillights and indicators and has nothing to do with the starter switch. But I was happy that I could be on my way!

Small, sleepy bodh gaya!


NH83 on the way to the GT road. One of the state highways and in pretty good shape too!


The sun rises over Bihar!


Some more scenary:





One of the many Tata 1610's which ply the Indian roads!



The NH5 was 30 kilometers from Bodh Gaya and I was soon on it a few minutes past 7am. The roads were great, and soon I crossed Dehri-on-Son river and neared Varanasi. All the major cities had a convenient byepass, so riding past them was a breeze, without getting stuck in any traffic. It would have been definitely harder to do this ride 10 years ago! I passed Varanasi around 10am, and Allahabad came up close to 12pm. I was fearing some traffic due to the Kumbh Mela, but the byepass came to the rescue again! But the UP/Bihar/Jharkhand stretch has a lot of small villages and towns along the highway, so one should slow down and be careful of pedestrians and small vehicles in these parts. I stopped at one of these towns to buy some water and soon a small crowd gathered around the bike. But this was a part of UP where people speak the politest Hindi possible and it was a pleasure talking to them. A fully clad rider on a Green motorcycle is a constant source of curiousity and conversation, and different people reacted differently depending on where I was. In Bihar, for example, people would just stop what they were doing and just stare at you!
One of the many towns on the way. Ride carefully in these parts!









After riding for 10 more minutes after the Allahabad byepass, I saw three roads - one went to the left crossing a railway track (where majority of the people were going) and there was a road to the right and then straight on, where no one seemed to be going. I thought that perhaps the road up straight was under construction, so I took the left road and asked the railway crossing operator for directions to Kanpur. He told me to take a U-turn and ride straight on the center road. I did exactly that, and which resulted in the best riding experience I had till date on the Ninja. The 80 odd kms stretch was absolutely stunning - the highway was elevated, with guard rails on the center and both the sides. And if that was not enough, fencing at ground level which prevented any kind of cow-jaywalker business. And no traffic at all. In the whole stretch, I passed just 4 trucks and a couple of cars. I thought this was an opportunity not to be lost so I crouched behind the tank and went flat out on the Ninja. 160 kmph came in no time on the Ninja, but then after that the Ninja struggled to gain more speed. I down shifted to fifth, went to 12,000 RPM and shifted to sixth on a slight decline. That made the speedo go past the 160 into 165-170 territory before briefing hovering at 170kmph for a few seconds. Then it came down to 160kmph as soon as the downward gradient ended. The road was an absolutely bliss and the concrete (not tarmac!) surface was so smooth - no bumps at all, even the slightest one. It just went on straight for stretches and I could see kilometers ahead. I also tried taking a video, but it ended up showing only my Odo instead of the road ahead - but will try and edit that to get the nice parts together.

The road of high rpm Nirvana!










A country side vista from the high speed highway:


But how do you value good things if they are available freely? Soon the great stretch ended and I was back on the normal (but good) highway. I crossed my planned layover stop Kanpur at 2.30pm and I thought it was a pity to stop and not keep riding. Kanpur has a beautiful elevated (flyover) byepass. I read somewhere that the Bangalore-electronic city one was the longest, but the Kanpur one seemed longer, though I could not record the exact length. After crossing Kanpur, I thought that Agra might be a nice place for the overnight stop. It was then I saw a fast moving vehicle in my RVM and I moved to my left. It was a VIP modified Ford Transit with heavily tinted glasses. It was doing 100-120 kms an hour so like a happy dog behind a moving ball, I slotted myself around 75 meters behind the vehicle. The van was soon joined by a Pajero with a red light and a police jeep so that made short work of the traffic . It kept on going toward Agra and around 7pm, I reached Agra. I saw a NHAI board which said that Delhi was 200 kms away, so I thought, why not?

The VIP convoy sliced through the heavy duty traffic, clearing it with its sirens blaring. I lost the convoy after it got stuck at the toll gates and I sneaked my way ahead after riding on the side 'kaccha' tracks. After Agra, I found my low fuel light come on so I pulled into a petrol pump. The VIP convoy also came to the same pump too after a few minutes! While I was re-fueling, one of the occupants from the convoy came down and started talking to me, and where I was coming from. I commented that I had been following their vehicles since the last few hundred kilometers and I was riding from Calcutta. I came to know after my conversation that the Ford Transit van was was also coming from Kolkatta after stopping in Burdwan!

By this time, I was very hungry. I had eaten practically nothing since morning and it was close to 900 kms on the saddle by this time. I was surviving by drinking water and energy bars, and when the bars finished, I started eating the chocolates which Dr. Vivek and Snig gave me at Burdwan the previous day. Thanks guys! But nevertheless, I was famished and when I saw the golden McDonalds arch glow sign come, I can't describe how relieved I felt. I took a U-turn and pulled into the drive thru. I ordered a Maharaja Mac and a Fillet-O-Fish and then parked my bike on the side. I took off my helmet, cleaned my grimy hands with the sanitizer and wolfed down the burgers as if I had not eaten for months! You should have seen me eating - I was practically shoving chunks of the burger into my month. Soon, my appetite sated and most of my sense regained, I continued my onwards journey to Delhi.

Now if someone had told me that there were 10,000 weddings happening in the NCR area on February 16th, and I would face the mother of all traffic jams on the Agra-Delhi highway, I would have stayed the night in one of the highway motels outside Agra. But I did not know it, so I kept on riding. When I first saw a marriage pandal on the side of the highway, I thought, 'Ah nice. Someone's getting married.'. Then I see a second, third and after some time I lost count, there were just too many. And people go to these weddings were already drunk, and zipped their cars across the roads. The real bad jams started after Palwal as I neared Ballabgarh. No signals crossing combined with the marriage rush and trucks translated into a free for all, with everyone trying to get out first. There were many such crossings which took a lot of time, and I thought I had seen it all till I hit the Delhi border. Kilometers of traffic piled up to get through a small road due to the construction work going on. Before entering Faridabad, I saw this road on the left which seemed to go to Gurgaon. I got on that road for a few minutes but the road began deteriorating so I turned back to get back on the road I knew. That perhaps cost me an extra 3 hours, but I thought it was safer to stick on a road I knew than to get on an unknown road.

In the process of getting to the Delhi border, I took down my Ninja on the side, which was a mixture of bumpy mud and rocks. Somewhere even where KTM's would fear to tread! By this time (past midnight), I was so tired that I just wanted to reach Gurgaon as soon as possible and really did not care how the roads were. And by the way, I saw our friends from the VIP convoy stuck in the traffic, their red flashing lights and sirens of little use

By 1am, I managed to get out of the mess and zipped to Gurgaon, where a room in the guest house awaited me. 1.30 am, and I finally reached the small hotel in Sushant lok. I cannot explain the feeling as I saw the clean beds ready to be slept on after spending exactly 19 hours in the saddle, traveling over 1,100 kms in a single day's ride. I stepped into the shower, let the warm water wash away my grime for many long minutes. After that,I needed no invitation to hit the bed - and I think I was sleeping within 30 seconds of hitting the bed. What a day it was!

Pictures of my Ninja (taken in the daytime) after doing a lot of offroading. The bungee cords were cut by the high speed dust. And the hugger served its purpose very,very well.

Day 5 log Approved

great write up..... dude how u managed to ride so much, i get completely exhausted when i ride more than 100 km.


but where are the day 1-4 entries???

Lovely. So the logs and pictures are flowing. Loved reading through the day's experience, bluevolt.

It was great meeting you too! And your chocolates were a great help on day 5!

And yes, with Rs.100, it was good bangs for my bucks! (the hugger!)

Is it? I don't why India is so photo phobic. Seems no reason at all!

Hey, don't worry about that small thing. I found my way comfortably to the apartment!

And it is awesome you could ride in that crazy traffic at a good speed! I was not used to it and was extremely careful, so I got left behind

Hope to meet you guys sometime soon! And thank you for everything!

Thank you everyone!


You bet it does! Without bad roads, good roads cannot be appreciated and be grateful for!

Yes indeed. And a Taj hotel at Rs.2,300. Can't get any better than this, can it?

Thank you guys! Sorry I could not reply earlier. Now home and have the whole day to myself!

Thank you! And I used the hand sanitiser for my visor throughout the trip. It gets rid of germs (and bugs too!)


Thank you saj and Vivek!

this is one of the most memorable days for him IMO... rest will follow soon!

The Gift A Dream Ride : Day 6: Gurgaon to Ambala; 244 kms, 3 hours

After the humongous day 5 trip, I needed my sleep badly so I woke up at 10.30 am the next day on February 17th! The beds were comfortable and the pillows fluffy, so I had a deep, dreamless sleep. After taking a quick shower, I grabbed some breakfast at the guest house and made calls to L.P (Nitin) and JD666 (Jaideep) who were in Gurgaon. Nitin's office was luckily just a stone's throw away (literally) from where I was staying so I simply got into my shorts and sneakers, wore my helmet and gloves and rode the bike out to his office. It was so near that even before I engaged the 3rd gear, I was there. He was waiting outside on the road and we caught up over cold drinks and snacks at a tea stall just outside his office. After a leisurely chat, I headed back to my room and started packing - again! Since I had managed to cover a good distance the previous day, all I had to do was to ride from Gurgaon to Ambala. So I could take it very easy and not rush up things. After I got into my leathers, Jaideep and his friend came along and we went to the nearby Galleria market and talked a bit over Subway sandwiches. Jaideep also told me of this fabulous road on the Bikaner-Jaisalmer stretch and that got me hooked. Since I had come so far, I was not the one to let a opportunity like that slip past. It was there, at Subway, that I decided to take a short detour of 1,500 kms which I would complete later!

Back at the guesthouse, Jaideep gently hosed the radiator fins clean with water(thanks buddy!) and also used his tool kit to tighten up the license plate bolts. Last night, due to extensive off-roading vibrations, one of the bolts in the license plate came loose and the plate almost dropped off. I was lucky to have spotted it during one of my twitter breaks and I tightened the remaining one bolt with my hand, praying that it would not fall off too! Apart from my number plate screw, one of the ty-raps on my DIY hugger had detached and fallen off so I put a spare one which I was carrying. I believe I had cut the original ty-raps too close to its locks, so after moving one notch due to the vibes, it simply fell off. But the other ty-raps(and main one) stayed put. I had spares ( I had anticipated something like this might happen) in my luggage for both the 10mm bolts and the ty-raps, so it was relatively easy with JD's toolkit.

My fancy blue license plate bolt fell off. Notice the difference in the color of both the bolts Picture by Jaideep


Getting ready to leave around 4.30 pm. Picture by Jaideep


Jaideep also told me I could tank up with speed 97 at a pump near the Delhi international airport, so I went there and filled my bike with high Octane stuff! It took an hour for me to reach the Delhi border on the GT road, where I met some of my colleagues! Some mini-reception that was on the highway - it became a crowd magnet soon so I had to leave in 10 minutes or so!

At the Delhi-Haryana border on the Delhi-Karnal GT road:


It was getting dark so I switched to my clear visor. The traffic also started clearing, so I began making decent speeds. Just seconds after getting on the Panipat elevated expressway, I saw a car gaining speed in my RVM's with a curved cluster of LED lights which could mean only one make - an Audi. I saw it was a Audi Q7 as soon as it took overtook me. I decided to do 'follow-the-car' trick again. The bright lights of the Q7 parted the traffic on the dark highway and soon it was doing speeds of 100-130 kms an hour. I had a few thousand kilometers so far and had not heard the engine shriek at 12,000 rpm, but I did soon enough. To keep up with the Q7's powerful accleration, I started doing 12k rpms when changing gears and boy, what a sound! On 97 Octane fuel, the exhaust note was a delight to hear in the dark of the night. I stopped only once when the Q7 got stuck in a toll booth. I took this time to put on my Balaclava since the night wind was chilly - after some time, the Audi came through the toll gates and I started following it again. The wind screamed and rushed around the vents of my helmet, and I crouched to let the air slipstream over the visor.

Ambala Cantonment came up in exactly two hours after I left the Delhi border. I had to take the road left below the flyover so I turned in that direction while the Q7 zipped away on the flyover, probably to Chandigarh. After a few minutes, I found myself in front of my friends house and parked my bike there. When I got off the bike, I found smoke coming from the exhaust side and I soon discovered that my right 'flame retardant' saddle bag had a burnt hole the size of an iPhone! I quickly took the bags off the bike and carried it upstairs to my friends house to check the damage. I was very, very lucky since heat had damaged things inside my bag and narrowly missed my passport and money pouch! But it burnt my waterproof bag cover inside the bag and warped my boot key and cutter blade! Here are a few pictures which I took later of the damage:







After keeping my bags, my friend suggested that I park my bike in another building he owned in the city which was a few hundred meters away so I went with him and parked my bike inside a closed parking inside the premises. I felt like I was Batman and was parking my Batmobile bike in a secret location! Back at home, I had a absolutely great home cooked dinner, the first one I had in a week!

I was not particularly tired so I sat around talking over desserts. When it was time to go to bed, I curled up in the quilts, savoring the cold Ambala night. After spending around 30 minutes on my netbook surfing emails, I decided it was time to sleep! Tomorrow was also going to be a light day, so I had the luxury of time on my side...