lol Call it the irony of life or something.... I had to use Mseal on my rim the day before and today you post this :P

Bwaahaa! I remember that chat @ Fountain about how MB is fully equipped with 21 ltrs of fuel!

Edit\Irnoy 2: applied Mseal (actually another sealant) bang opposite to hotel fountain!

very nice Misraji...! I'm enjoying, keep it flowing.

Section 2: The Journey > Chapter 6: No tank you.

Section 2: The Journey > Chapter 6: No tank you.

May 10

Sometimes the Universe conspires in our favour. And today was to be that day. For a few furlongs into the ride, a tractor with a dismembered wheel, lying carelessly in the shade of a raw construction, catches our eye. The idle rim hinting at the possibility of capable hands behind the wheel. We follow the dirt track to the construction and as we do, a greased human bobs up into our view port. We ask for help and, to our relief, we get it. He gets to work, removing the seat, disentangling the tank from the rest of the machine; but not before he empties the fuel into 2 large canisters. He flips over the tank so we may view its innards; his face beaming through multiple cracks. It will need to be gas welded. It will need to be taken elsewhere for our saviour in shining grease hasn't the equipment. And so, he, along with an aid who hugs the tank like he has loved no other, hop on their trusty scooter and leave us with a promise to be back within the hour.

Facebook update: Motors bike tank leaking. Gas welding being done @50 bucks.
30 May at 09:54 via Text message

Satyen Poojary
M-Seal lagao ... Where are you guys now?
30 May at 10:23

Gopinath Venugopal
Day One..rocking.
30 May at 10:26

Anil Correa
no wonder he was able to put 21 liters of fuel in it.
30 May at 10:28

Adway Kudalkar
‎@anil yeah...
30 May at 12:08

Snehil Pandey
hahaha...thank god pata chal gaya
30 May at 12:51

Sagar Raikar
kaun bola 21l bharne
31 May at 00:11

We idle our time away; sometimes toying with our phones, mostly indulging in pointless discussions on Karizma vs Pulsar perpetuated by their respective owners. I am reluctant to call these discussions "debates" for they would have to have the intellectual equivalence of "My father is better than your father" in the debating realm. Spiderweb manages to activate GPRS on his trusty phone and installs Google Latitude - a magnificent GPS Navigation system telling us where we are, where we want to be (with a little help from us) and how to get from here to there. The system will help us out of some tight spots in the days to come. My phone gives in to a dying battery. Nothing unproductive left to do. I remove my jacket, fold it up, find myself some shade and drift into oblivion.

I'm awakened by Motorbreath announcing that our saviour has since returned. The cracks have disappeared. Brand new scratches have been carefully added to the contraption, perhaps as a memento to remind Motorbreath of this day. Motorbreath isn't thrilled. He did not say so. I deduced it from the number of times he uttered F*** in ten seconds. A few more minutes dedicated to cursing his mechanic in Mumbai who failed to spot this issue and we are back in the saddle again.

It's nearing noon now. We expect it to be frighteningly hot. But things are about to get cold... very cold.

haha gud joke...modest bus...tard...

Actually if you notice, my vocab is pretty small - I don't use big words often cause I dont know any

Arre we didn't click anything in this whole stretch (except for a few shots later in the trip). To be honest the scenery was modest at best and I did not really think it was "necessary" to click stuff like rickshaws and all at that time - Of course I'm kicking myself for not doing it cause yeah it would have made a nice addition to the blog Oh well, note for the future, take nothing for granted

zimply awesome!!!!

Attach some pics na....

and ya BTW....if you taking a crash course...dont forget me..

How bout a crash course in English Vocab?

Thank you both for the encouraging words. Will continue the crusade

"Beautiful" is all i can say after reading this thread. Your trip is an amazing accomplishment but you really deserve special appreciation for this well-written trip log or should i say well-made piece of art.. So let it flow......

Wow!!

Love those little observations you have written and I wish my travel blogging skills were as good as yours

Your writing skills make your blog a real interesting read.Carry on.....

Section 2: The Journey > Chapter 5: Gujarat in my window

Section 2: The Journey > Chapter 5: Gujarat in my window

May 10th

When I digressed last, Motorbreath wasn't in my viewport. Few seconds out, and there he is, a red-black spec of flesh and metal riding into my view horizon. As he pulls alongside me, he gestures indicating his steed cannot cope with speeds beyond a 110kmph. He rides ahead to demonstrate. With full throttle, and me tailing closely behind, he blasts off into the ether once more. And no sooner does my speedometer register a 110, sure enough, his steed starts stalling. To further impress his point, Motorbreath crouches over to minimize drag. Nope; his speedo stays defiantly at 1-1-0. I notice one additional problem. His silencer is quivering, hanging precariously from the steed as an extraneous limb. Motorbreath is more than aware of the problem; for through the remainder of our journey, his worn-out tyres and broken silencer cause him, and us, a great deal of anxiety.

As the six lane highway dissolves into a one lane with two-way traffic, three digit speeds become a luxury. Thankfully, the tarmac seems to be in mint condition - a welcome respite in otherwise aggravating riding conditions. Aggravating, for vehicle discipline is vastly undermined on one lanes. Oncoming vehicles plagiarizing our space, pushing us into extremities of the tarmac in a bid to shave off a few minutes from what is possibly their daily commute and doing so with an apologetic smile as if to say, "I'm sorry I'm nearly trying to kill you; but 5 minutes of my time are perhaps more precious then the lifetime that lays ahead of you. Sorry again. Don't be a stranger now! I'll screw you again soon.". The absurdity is not restricted to one lane. It translates equally well into 2, 4 and 6. Even dividers don't prevent some from attempting murder on our side of the tardom. We frequently encounter these smiling serial killers on motor heading directly toward us on a corner in the middle of a cornering lean, only to have to shift our weight, redirect the machine's momentum and steer clear of Dhansukhbhai and family. But I'm getting ahead of the story here...

Aggravating or not, our progress is tempered. For once, I get my chance to give Gujarat the eye. And while I'm painfully aware that whatever little is offered up by the NH8 through the window of my hardhat is not representative of Gujarat in all its glory, I'm blessed to have a flavour of its experience. For I have been here before; when I was just a boy. The memories have since faded; those that stood beside me then, stand beside me no more. Them I remember in this moment.

Maybe its just me but I notice a certain softness to the nature of Nature in Gujarat; a quiet contradiction to the raw spirit of Maharashtra. Paddy fields run alongside for miles. Parrot green rickshaws with yellow hats carrying at least 15 passengers; all you see of them are their heads - like a bouquet of human faces wrapped neatly in steel.

I see faces; each one with a story of his or her own. The young offer a look of bewilderment and excitement over our outlandish appearance; the middle-aged, quiet smiles and glances, often looking away as if to catch a dream of their own; the old - a glazed look of anguish and indifference. Of course I generalize. For there is evidence of indifference in youth and of dream-catchers without pearly whites.

Our journey seems to be progressing at discernible pace; no nasty surprises so far except for one.

Facebook update: Bee splattered on motors helmet n left big foul stench!
30 May at 07:10 via Text message

Winsey Varghese
lol :P
thats normal
30 May at 12:04

Leena Sabharwal
u got any honey ??!!
30 May at 21:38

Dinesh Samtani
LOL!!!!!!!
31 May at 01:48


and moments later...


Facebook update: 425km @vasad!
30 May at 07:17 via Text message

-Rajni Taneja-
Nice Nice...
Ride safe N keep updating!
30 May at 12:11

Dinesh Samtani
awesome!!!
30 May at 17:39

Gopinath Venugopal
i hope the update ka josh stays through the whole trip....take care
30 May at 21:28

"We'll get our forty winks in Ahmedabad, elude the merciless sun", I think to myself. So far it has chosen to hide behind the clouds and revel in our fear. We still have some way to go before we rendezvous with the Big-A.

A peacock spotting by Spiderweb gives us an excuse to take a break, rest our backs, hydrate ourselves. As we hop back onto our steeds, Motorbreath hollers out to us. There's a puddle of liquid underneath his machine. We hope to God its just a minor oil spill. But on close inspection, the unmistakable smell of petrol convinces us that God wasn't listening.

Facebook update: Motors bike leaking petrol in drips! Trying to figure out COL.
30 May at 09:30 via Text message
(COL = Cause of Leak; which I derived from COD = Cause of Death (CSI). I thought it was clever at the time.)

We need to find the cause and fix it before his fuel runs out.

NICE!!!!!!!!! Much required to enjoy the log to the fullest

Much much more to come...stay tuned i would say :P

Nice trip...and some very good pics...

Section 2: The Journey > Chapter 4: Interlude

You'd be a deluded writer if, at the onset of your adventure, you went on to declare that the protagonists lived happily ever after. For even though it is, for the most part, an expectation...nay a law by which most adventures are written; your readers don't want to hear you blurt it out when you've barely begun telling the story. They like to delude themselves that the converse is indeed possible, only to discover for themselves that which they always knew. Its the thrill of self discovery they seek and its nothing short of criminal to deprive them of their right.

And yet I am about to step across literary bounds and commit murder. I am about to reveal, that the protagonists did indeed live happily up until the publication of this note. As for the ever after, your guess is as good as mine. Why would I commit such blatant mutiny? Why would I murder my own child?

For the dynamics of this blog are vastly different from your average paperback. This is being read, for the most part, as its being written, chapter by chapter. I do not have the liberty to go back and edit my words - at least not before I cause some buzz. This puts me in a precarious situation. For as the stories unfold, there will be times where readers will be quick to judge us, our intellect, our riding, our friendship, our very core. And while perceptions might change as the adventure progresses and the protagonists mature, given the interlude between each post, opinions will be formed; opinions not about fictitious characters, but about real people. I fear that these opinions may be unfair and just plain wrong in the absence of the big picture, one that will be woven only at the completion of this blog.

It is to prevent this mishap that I inject this interlude.

As the pages progress, you will see us fail, you will see us falter, you will see us buckle under the pressures of long distance riding, give in to fatigue, to anger, to stupidity, to selfishness, to misinformation. We turn on each other, call each other names, behave like infants...sometimes animals, scream till we can breathe no more, hate till we can hate no more. Yes, its all here. It all happens.

But as you read through the passages, don't be quick to judge us, or judge one. For as fervently as we do all of the above, we share laughs, stories of lovers lost, of joys, of sorrows, of disasters, of potential soul mates lost in the sands of time, of the joys of biking, of the need for biking with equal gumption. We fall only to find at least one other lending a helping hand, words of comfort and some much needed spare change, spare cigarettes, spare parts... of the biking genre I must clarify. And yes, we do live happily ever after - that is up until today. For now our destinies are tied together no more.

And with that quick clarification, we continue forth with our journey. Remember, do not judge us, for we do not judge our selves, individually, or collectively. We merely make mistakes, learn from them, or try to and then forget them all as we chart our course for more adventures...