Two Machines and Three Men

Last month, the long bike trip I have been dreaming about for eons actually materialized. Of course my original plan was ride all the way to probably Kanyakumari and back.

However, some friends said they were planning to go to Vizag for a camp; and to make it interesting, bike it all the way. A Bangalore-based cousin's impromptu wedding plans put paid to this cross-country trip and saw us heading instead towards the Garden City. I am not complaining. The friends, Benny and Johnson, agreed to come along. Very important considering their original plan was very different and most of the others had dropped out at the nth hour.

But we had our bike trip, saw lands we never planned to see, and I attended a wedding after more than a decade and a family one for the first time (reconfirmed my feelings about the worthlessness of it all) and after 10 days on the road made it back home safe and sound.

I won't go into the details of the trip now. Will save that for later. As I keep telling friends who want me to write about these stuff I am not good at expressing my feeling in words.

But the last leg of the trip was memorable. We were planning to leave Goa early morning on the 31st, with a stopover at Ratnagiri. But one bike broke down along the way. Nothing major. Just the clutch cable snapping due to the strain on the Ghats. But how does one proceed without the clutch! Since we had to stop at the mechanics anyways I decided to get some work done on my clutch as well.

Unfortunately, no Enfield mechanics along the way. And the one we finally found didn't have the necessary tools to work on the Thunderbird. Thankfully, this guy was quite innovative. But Innovation takes time. And after a two hour delay we finally made it to Ratnagiri. Once we reached there though our plans underwent a dramatic change. I wanted to make it to Mumbai before the clock rung in the New Year; and the other guys were also enthused with the idea. So with full support from my two team mates we started speeding. Close to 250Kms to cover and less than 5 hours at hand.

It was already around 7:00 PM. Dark as it can get. A dangerous two-lane highway with no dividers separating the traffic. At times the road narrows down to a lil more than single lane width. If it was daytime and if it was not the last day of the year we probably wouldn't even have attempted something so crazy.

But for the next four hours we sped nonstop over the Ghats straining both ourselves and our machines to extremes. My head is spinning even as I write this. Our initial plans of taking breaks after every 70-80Kms completely slipped our minds in the excitement.

And the more miles we covered the more eager we were to reach home at the earliest. With around 80 Kms to cover and just a lil under an hour left for midnight hour we knew we were short on time. And we definitely didn't want to start the New Year with a sense of failure. My Pillion, Johnson, goaded us to speed at 80kmph or above.

Crazy. Especially since he made that comment just before we touched the Karnala Ghats where I had met with a bad accident coupla year’s back. And for similar reasons. Speeding at 100kmph on the tortuous curves in the middle of the dark night. But that's exactly what we did.

I guess we were doing that from the moment we left Goa. Speeding on the ghats like crazy, taking in those curves at full throttle. The only difference after 7:00PM is that visibility is next to zero. And when the taillights of one bike is gone and only the dipper works as far as the headlights are concerned you are half blind.

But what an adrenalin rush. To feel in control at that speed when combined with the possibility of things going wrong in a split second is amazing. The thrill, the heady rush cannot be described in mere words. It has to be experienced.

To tell you the truth, at high speeds control is just an illusion. You could ride straight off the road and fall off some 3-400 feet down or crash head-on into an oncoming vehicle or just smash into the hill or rock or bounce off a pothole or just go skidding outta control on a really sharp curve especially since there's so much of loose gravel and sand to aid you here, and then there are the oncoming vehicles blinding you with their bledy headlights on upper instead of dipper. The possibilities are immense. And all these thoughts constantly fight with your insanity. But then as Nietzsche once said to build character you have to live dangerously.

I don't know whether that makes any sense but I would like to think he's right:) Anyways we made it home with 20 mins to spare. Five mins to unpack and at the door at quarter to midnight. Welcoming the New Year on a different kind of high.