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**Divya Sharan** · 03-03-2015, 11:57 AM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Approved!

Something interesting brewing up. You toured 1.5L km on Dhanno?

**Sharrrrrrad** · 03-03-2015, 12:36 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

That was untill 2014. So no big deal for 10 years of riding... Thanks for approval!

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Here we go...

I have waited too long to realize my dream of riding a motorcycle everywhere possible. Dreaming of owning every other motorcycle possible, reading about motorcycles, drooling at them in the traffic signals. After a lot of research I had narrowed it down on Royal Enfield Thunderbird 350 as the bike was well known in India for its touring capabilities and riding it felt really nice, Hence I booked one which was to be delivered in 4 months, enough time to figure out the finances. The patience in me was gone and I could wait no more. In the parallel world I had to quit my job to find a better paying job to be able to afford my RE TBTS, hence I did quit my job few days after my 28th birthday. After serving the notice period I did get a better paying job, wolaaa.

Now the visits to RE showroom to ask about the delivery date started, I think this is the way we RE riders build our relationship with the bike. Like the pre marriage anxiety and we do have pre marriage jitters when we hear about the troubles others face owning an RE. Month of September I got a call from RE showroom, "Sir gaadi ready ide, bandu payment maadi" (Trans: Your vehicle is ready sir, Please make the payment). That is the day I understood the definition of butterflies in my stomach. I left early from office and rode straight on Dhanno to RE showroom, after the payment was done the showroom guy told me I would not get the color I asked for as it is not in stalk, Matte black(stone), I was outraged and the usual stuff I got the delivery of my bike 1 week later(the color I booked for). I went to the showroom with my girlfriend who was equally excited about the bike, I guess even she was annoyed listening to my stories at RE showroom like everyone else who knows me, I did not tell her we are going to collect the bike, he he he. That was one surprise.

Jab we met for the first tme...

I call her Laila, you know I waited for her so long, hence the name

. Started riding her everywhere so that I complete the Run-in asap. Everyone I showed the bike to, loved the bike and congratulated me with one word, "Finally". I have a friend who was riding HH passion for almost same time. For a solid coincidence, he got his RE TBTS Marine blue delivered one week after mine in Goa. Now the "Wild hogs" trip we talked about for years started to clear up as a reality.(more on that in my next TLog)

I had joined xbhp in 2012 as I used to love spending time reading about rides people do and reviews on new motorcycles. Somehow I was part of Xbhp Bangalore and was planning to meet up the folks on weekly bakar sessions. I want to thank XBHP for enlightening me in various ways. I used to ride with just a helmet and now I have all possible gears to keep me safe and lot of knowledge about touring. Now, I feel I am more evolved rider than ever.

I did plan one ride to Kolar road and was stuck because of the troubles Laila had with Fuel leak.

Initial riding days...

Went straight to RE showroom next day and got that fixed. I started preparing myself with tools and things required to go for touring. Started watching videos on youtube about fixing RE's like I would end up with same issue, I at least would have an idea about what to do. I enrolled myself in XBHP bangalore ride to Kudremukha and I was thrilled by the kind of bikes that would come for this trip. As I always rode solo to all of my previous rides, this would be some experience.

Kudremukh ride.

The biggest challenge ahead of me was waking up at 3:30am and being at the rendezvous point. I got my bike's 2nd service done and was looking out for minor nibbles here and there, Visited RE showroom 3 times to get them fixed. Still not so confident about things I needed for the ride were complete or not. Finally evening of 12 december I wrapped up all the work at office by 6pm and headed straight to Shell petrol bunk on outer ring road and filled up the tank. Reached home with a plan that I will go to sleep early. Before changing, I filled up my new Rynox tank bag which I had received 2 days back along with Rynox saddle bags. There was some weird kind of excitement in packing that bag for the first time, today, I dont think I would ride anywhere without those bags, they are pretty awesome. Lesson learnt after the ride that we should not put heavy tools in tank bag for it might slide down resting on riders abs and should never extend the bike capacity by additional zipper, this hinders riding comfort on TBTS 350/500.
I tried going to sleep at around 11:30pm. I had kept alarm on my computer connecting to Sony 2.1 channel speakers (thats the amount of effort i need to wake up early). But, here is the catch, there were lot of first times happening with me on that ride, like first long ride on new bike, first ride with xbhp, first ride with such big group, also the slow group had avg speed of 80-100kmph, I was wondering what would fast group do? 2:00am and I was still awake with all these thoughts in mind and chatting with some folks on whatsapp. I kept my phone away and tried to get a power nap and I did. I woke up to the loud song "Skrillex - Breaking a Sweat"", Imagine this song playing really loud at 3:30am, that must have surely woken up my neighbors

. It took half an hour for me to reach my parking lot and start riding. I checked whatsapp and people were already on the move. I started the bike and rode straight to Nelmangala meeting point where I met some of the riders and glad I was among the early few ones to reach. With Chai and sutta started the usual bike talks and stories of reaching the point.
In a city like bangalore where everyone is swearing at each other in traffic, it was nice to meet such nice people who had calm smiles on their faces, introducing each other. These people were the so called riders, I always believed that riding is close to meditation, and this has an equivalent effect on all those who ride. On my side I was trying really hard to remember all the names as I am bad at it. Everyone reached the point and decided to roll. Saquib briefed us on the fast group and slow group. I was obviously in slow group. Aproximately 5:30am we all started and decided to stop at Mayura ~85kms from start point. I started at 70kmph and in no time I was at 100kmph. The sun was rising and I had a wide grin on my face, I was on a faster side of slow group and I enjoyed few things I should note here. Firstly the speed at early morning was so much fun, the signals were getting passed from the lead to tail, talk about responsibility of each other and going together as a group, the word was wow, I was somewhere in the middle so I could see some lights on my RVM in line, again, wow.
Reached Mayura at some time, I lost track of time and was only enjoying the ride. Mayura hotel's parking was lined up with around 40 bikes. What a sight it was. people were checking the bikes, specially Harish aka Dr Busa's Hayabusa and Roshan's Hyosung Gt650r. I realized I get super hungry if I wake up early, the puri bhaji and chai at mayura was filling.
I would not detail each and every part of the journey till kudremukh. Here, I was already part of the group and was enjoying the ride to my fullest. Some important part of the ride I would like to highlight here, we reached near hassan and we had to say bye bye to express highway. I was excited as I like the country roads more than express highways. Ride started with cautious corners which were fun and asking for more, somehow during the ride I was following Rahul on Yamaha FZ and was trying to do what he was doing, I had the first taste of cornering at speeds more than 60kmph. I got into the groove and in the state of trance just following the rider ahead, I missed to watch my RVM and Rahul missed a turn. We ended up going ~15kms ahead. I would never regret this detour for I had max fun cornering on this one, Rahul had good skills cornering. Both of us stopped at one point and asked a guy about way to kudremukh. That guy was waiting for bus and I decided to give him lift till Kudremukh cross. Since this guy had no gears on, I could not continue the cornering. We reached the point and Saquib was talking about tapa's ABS, One funny narration. So we all reached kudremukh and rest of the story is on Feb-March 2015 issue of Xbhp magazine.
Having done the kudremukh ride, I was a lil more experienced with my bike and had learnt a lot on one single g2g ride. At one point in the dry pool everyone was senti, I remember the dialogue "Rulaega kya re pagle" (Trans: Dude, are you going to make me weep?)

**Sharrrrrrad** · 03-03-2015, 02:08 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Ride to Goa

PM = AM here :P

This ride was the much anticipated one. It was our usual ritual to be in Goa for the last week of the year, for we had tried being in bangalore and it was not fun. Dimple was to leave from bangalore on 20th to her Brother's place (bellary) for christmas. So I had thought of leaving bangalore on 23rd, reach hubli, park my bike at my cousin's place and go by bus to Karwar (I did not wanted anyone in Karwar to find out about my ride). I returned from Karwar on 26th morning and we both decided to meet at Hubli Railway station and start riding towards Goa from there.
On 23rd Morning I started riding towards Hubli, this time I was solo, but still some memories from Kudremukha ride were in my head. I started cruising my bike at 80Kmph with occasional speed bursts. I had taken only 2 breaks untill hubli and it was my own new record.

On 26th morning I reached hubli at around 9:30am, quickly rushed to my cousin's place and collected the bike. I reached Hubli station at around 11am. Dimple had reached Hubli 2 hrs early and she was not angry on me for reaching late(surprisingly) I think the excitement of whats ahead of us, kept her calm. Here she comes out of Hubli railway station with Rynox saddle bags (she had taken these bags earlier as we did not wanted to carry extra luggage from christmas trip back to bangalore), I was very happy to see her. We started the trip heading towards Dharwad. After reaching Dharwad, we thought of reaching Goa via Dandeli.
Actually Goa was only 170kms from Dharwad, the detour made it 300kms. In dandeli we visited Dimple's school and childhood home. The school was running but the entire KPC colony was abandoned. We had good time in front of her childhood home talking about good old days. The extra 130kms was totally worth it.

From Dandeli we headed towards Ganeshgudi(Suppa dam). This was the spot I crossed so many times during my college days on Dhanno. For the first time I was here with Dimple and new bike (laila). Such a nice feeling it was. On the other hand there was a story I read in news paper few days back that a tiger was let loose in these jungles and had eventually turned into Man Eater. Same day, some 100kms away in belgaum jungle that tiger was killed after he had hunted one more lady. I told this to dimple and we zoomed out of the area in no time.

We crossed londa and were talking about our epic trip to doodhsagar in 2013. Moving on, while we were on the way from Londa to Molem, the road condition was very bad in Karnataka side, at some point there was a board which reads "Welcome to Goa", it really does welcome you to Goa with very good tarmac.

Traffic was now increasing and we were getting hang of the New year incoming traffic in Goa. We started preparing ourselves mentally, moment we reached around 5kms outside panjim, I saw the biggest traffic jam in goa ever. Lucky for us, we were on 2 wheels and I zipped through small gaps available and reached way ahead at the signal (Some use of zipping through traffic training in Bangalore). Here the plan was to meet Laxya in Porvorim (The guy with HH Passion and got RE TBTS 350 the same week as I did). I thought of skipping that plan as traffic was too much and we wanted to reach Arambol(North goa) as soon as possible. We were aware of trekking we had to do to reach our rooms(for the sake of view), Reaching there at night won't be fun.
We reached our beloved Arambol at around 8:30pm. I parked my bike at one safe location and we started walking towards our room (It was on the way to sweet lake in Arambol) with all the luggage we had. Once we reached our room we found out that there was a frog in room, this guy would not leave the place. If I put him out of the door, he would come back through window, he was peaceful though. I named him wilson, he was with us the whole week. We were tired but had to go out for food. So freshened up and set out in Goa attire, all exhausted but high on spirits.
Rest of the days was spent tripping in Goa, let the pictures do the talking.

While we were in Arambol I made 3 trips towards panjim and every time I just loved riding through those roads. This time on Laila, special feeling of that mild thumps. We did make another trip to Old goa church to see the St Xavier's exposition with Dimple, Laxya and my cousin Sachin. Me and Laxya were riding in parallel, both of us had transformed from HH passion and TBTS 350, his is Marine blue. We often had that "finally" moment when we would gaze at our bikes parked besides each other. And in the state of trance we missed clicking even a single pic of both bikes together. At the church we were in a never ending queue for about 4hrs. But, we had fun chatting stupid things and passing taunts here and there in Goan Konkani.
After church we reached opposite of high church Panjim, we had mouth melting "Ras Omelette" there with poli (goan bread). From there, we headed back to Porvorim and had some yummy sea food at our fav joint. For dimple, that place was first time, me and laxya go there often for boozing. After dinner, we came back to our camp Arambol.
At Arambol we had our dear friend Sabine, she is a french lady who likes India. We spent most of our time with her as she is a delightful company. she has traveled all over the world and has plenty of experience to share from different places and has an aura where she ends up making friends anywhere she goes. We spent some time at her pottery classes and tried making some sculptures

Queue at Old goa church..

Pics from new years eve..

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On our return we thought of staying at Dandeli at Dimple's aunt's place. We had yummy food (king fish, chicken, dry prawns bhaji and Manglorean dosas). Sorry for that list, I cant help but to share it.
Next day, Aunty had packed some Dosa's wrapped around coconut and sugar mixtures.(for the Journey). We left early in the morning from Dandeli. Stopped at some random place for some pictures

We started our journey with lot more wandering here and there and clicking pics on the way.

We stopped besides some Areca nut plantation way before Chitradurga. parked the bike on service road and entered the estate to rest for some time. We had those power dosas here. We were really passing the blessings to aunty with each bite.

We reached bangalore in the night after crossing all the usual bangalore traffic.

Thus ending another memorable trip of our lives and building my relation with Laila even stronger. For the days to come, I think she will be in my every frame that I click. So much that even my gf would get jealous about her.

Cheers!

**krishna77** · 03-03-2015, 02:46 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

A brilliant combo of text and photography. Thumb up from me!

**Newbie101** · 03-03-2015, 07:07 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Good write up man! Waiting for the next chapter.

**TheArcher84** · 03-03-2015, 08:09 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Awesome..I wish I could do something like this with my wife

...

**MUSTANG 27** · 03-03-2015, 08:24 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Perfect mate, pics, write up superb just like watching the movie carry on series.....

**CH03l7263** · 03-03-2015, 10:29 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Nice write up and interesting photographs, looks like a lot of riding, fun, adventure. Good going, I wish I was closer to Goa.

**Sharrrrrrad** · 03-03-2015, 10:50 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Originally posted by TheArcher84 View Post

Awesome..I wish I could do something like this with my wife

...

Never too late brother. Just do it.

**Sharrrrrrad** · 03-03-2015, 11:06 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Originally posted by MUSTANG 27 View Post

Perfect mate, pics, write up superb just like watching the movie carry on series.....

Thank you, Rajesh anna.

Originally posted by CH03l7263 View Post

Nice write up and interesting photographs, looks like a lot of riding, fun, adventure. Good going, I wish I was closer to Goa.

Yes, Indeed. Where are you from?

**CH03l7263** · 03-03-2015, 11:46 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Originally posted by Sharrrrrrad View Post

Thank you, Rajesh anna.

Yes, Indeed. Where are you from?

I thought my location is visible on my xbhp avatar

; never mind. Mostly spent all my years up North and presently in NCR now.

**Sharrrrrrad** · 03-03-2015, 11:55 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

It was not visible in xbhp app. There is so much in the North too, even we feel like being there to ride. Like the saying about neighbor's grass :P

**CH03l7263** · 03-04-2015, 12:06 AM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Great catch about the xbhp app, yes I am yet to see anything up North yet on my bike

Will goto Goa IBW next year for sure.

Sent from my SM-T311 using xBhp Connect mobile app

**rkbalaji** · 03-07-2015, 11:10 PM

Re: Ride of the Laila to Goa

Good writeup sharrrrrrad:-P waiting for more

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Ride of the Laila to Goa

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