when the thought of goin on a long ride comes to your mind....you don't seem to be thinking so much about the technicalities of the actual ride...the only thing that comes to my mind is infact that open landscape...no traffic on the road and endless thumping....
i actually would say it was the sole reason that attracts me to it....
so it all began one fine day in the office when i saw the ROK banner on the RE website a small little notification that said - registrations open , i said ok great i can make it through, the next think i knew i was taking prints of stuff they needed from me and started making the package needed to submit for the registration.
didn't put in a lot of thought into it - it was a blink decision - 8 days, riding everyday, going to places i've not sen before - sounded like my kind of stuff to do. calle dup home and "told" that i'm going ( one advantage of beinga grown up is that you don't ask permissions, you tell them :) thought u live in the same house with your parents...)
Soon i was done with the papers submisison and now the next thing to figure out is how to get to Ahmedabad. ride was th efirst though but again hadn't done it ever so was not too particular about whether it was a good idea or not, esp. because of the inexperience on riding on sch long journeys on road here in India. after considering the rush in trains/ bookings decided that i need to get the tickets done and will try to pull in the motorcycle on the same train and that would be the easiest. but again was hovering the thought of riding all the way through on my mind, only needed a mild push to go for it and i knew it in my heart that i'm going ot do it - ride the bullet from home to Ahmadabad straight up...
soon enough i got in touch with a couple of guys on email who wanted to ride along to Ahmadabad so it was decided that we are all riding, got the train tickets cancelled out and started preparing for the long haul...
before the ride:
had my shoei taken out from the store room, got my jacke pulled out as well, the back support, gloves etc. these things came out after over a yr. they were used with my CBR the last time, purchased some knee/shin protectors and got spare cables etc.
got basic preperation done but nothign too into detail - was wanting it to be a less than too organsied a trip - so intentionaly left a few things undefined/ as is.
and then the experience started on 11th friday morning @ 4:00 am - i packedup a bagpack with basic essentials - it was still atleast 15 kgs in wieght - and kicked the bullet @ 2669 kms to start off my adventure ride from home. got to ghodbunder road where i met up with vinit and pavan, we syned up for a few minutes and started off to our journey towards ahmedabad.
5:00 am we started off and by 8 am we were in Daman - the plan was to stall over and pick up some alcohol and then proceed along towards surat and then finally to ahmedabad.
breakfast in daman was good, but we got delayed due to formallities of picking up the permit etc. nonetheless we were on our way to surat around 11 form daman and then a few moe delays here and there got us upto surat by around 1 - stoped by for lunch and then started off further on to reach lots of stop points and ultimately ahmedabad by around 9:30ish
SNAP! right outsie ahmd ciy, my clutch cable snapped off and i pulled over to the side of the busy narol naka. got the cable out of the bag and called up for help to vinit and my BIL - hirenkumar, before they came around i had already taken out the original broken cable and was abt. to replace it with the new one. was extremely impressed with the simplicity with which you can do the clutch cable change - you might do it w/o even a single tool - with your own bare hands and maybe gloves - it was that simple!!!
the next day was introductions and then departure was early morning th next day from ahmd towards kutch, now i could give an acount of what exactly happened and how and so on but that you can get even by reading any of the bogs/ run down of the trip anywhere. what i want to put on records are hose few moments of this trip that've left an impression on my mind and those moments are how i'll ultimately remmember this trip
1st day in the little rann -the real deal started, we were riding on the terrain thats called "RANN" it's basically parched soil that was wet once upon a time and then the moisture was lost which tearsup the soil - almost like dead skin, the idea is to ride on it on pre-driven roads because otherwise the terrain could be surprising for you.
the fact that when a vehicle rides on this terrain, it leaves a mark - kinda like a groove that's abt. half an inch deep tells you that the flat terrain only looks flat, it may suddenly sqoosh in and the bike may react to this dipping differently depending upon the speed, balancing conditions and the angle at which the wheel is riding on it. ideal thing to do is to keep the handle loose, legs close to the motorcycle and handle straight and of course speed that keeps you comfortable and on the terrain, a tip that when reminded comes in handy early on in such ride
when i was doing 90-100 kmph on the rann, there was a sense of thrill goign thru mymind, the bike vibrating , engine thumping, wind blowing hard, also keeping the sped up with fellow riders so that you don't get lost/ left behind and you tryin to make sue you don't hit a wet patch that can be dangerous for you, it's all of these elements that make riding on that little rann a unique experience, something that sems pretty boring but whiel you are riding into nowhere on the long stretch of "flat" land, there are so many things happenieng between the rider, his bike and the road below that it's nothin less than a roller coaster ride!
Riding @ 110 kmph on tar road with best visibility - thee have been distinctively only a handful of times wen i have trid he max limit on both myself as well as my machine. it as on hwy 280 from mountain view to SF on my CBR600RR when i had done 100 mph. at that moment i knew that this is probably the highest i've ever gone (apart from when i was sitin in aircrafts); that thrill is something else al together, and wierd thing is that the thrill lasts only for a few moments. and then sanity kicks in and you realize that what you are doing is pretty dangerous and u cannot give anything a chance to ruin it for you for ever, so then you readily let got on he acci and soon the thrill is replaced by a wOw and then a phew...so it's one of those things where you only want to enjoy it momentarily and keep i that way..(in some level i think it's pretty close to going to a stripclub isn't it..if you started doin it on a regular basis, it's risky, plus it looses the thrill factor ;) )
somethign similar was experienced when i tried out the bullet to 110 kmph, flat road no sign of animal/ human on the road and enough room to try the max but due to the way the bullet is designed i can tell that it's not a bike for high speeds at all, it feels like a very light machine at such high speeds, a small pebble or a little dip/ bump on the road can ruin it for you big time...so i did try110 once and then kept it that way for about 20-25 seconds and then realized that it's not a smart idea esp. on a road that's not too familiar, again that sanity kicked in and i bid farewell to the thrill factor.
a glimpse of the nilgai - an animal that looks part donkey, part buffalo, part giraffe! was riding on a deserted road when suddenly the terrain started showing me some green and while i was appreciating the vegetation around and suddenly i look to my right over the shoulder - this wierd looking curious thing popping it's head out and running towards the road. for a moment i comprehended it to be a donkey - but then it was too tall for a donkey, could it be a horse? it was too high for a horse as well, took a second glance again and saw it was nothing that i had seen before. it was only after the ride that day in he night when other riders talked about what they saw it was confirmed that the animal all of saw was a nilgai - an animal thts rare.
rid on a road that's called India-pakistan road by the fencing that seperate our land from pakistan - a dirt road that was parallel to the fencing where suddenly the thumping sound of the bullets, in unison with the raising dust and sand - cried out "Don't mess with us" saw the sardar post, pointed out our exact location on the paper map met with the Jawans great feeling, suddenly it registers that you are so close to something that's a part of history. left the BOP no. 1115 with a sense of fulfilment, Oh and almost forgot to mention those curses we uttered while riding back to those pakistanis!
riding to BOP muchi was another experience of a lifetime - riding on stones/ boulders was what it was, thee was no road but only certain white markings that borderline the stones that you are supposed to ride on from the stones that you are not supposed to. while i was riding on those, i felt pretty bad for my bike, poor thing was dashing on and bouncing off of so many different sized stones that it was a very bumpy ride.
the one thing we cudn't do was ride on the salt desert - something that i will leave for some other time maybe....maybe kutch maybe death valley who knows....
i actually would say it was the sole reason that attracts me to it....
so it all began one fine day in the office when i saw the ROK banner on the RE website a small little notification that said - registrations open , i said ok great i can make it through, the next think i knew i was taking prints of stuff they needed from me and started making the package needed to submit for the registration.
didn't put in a lot of thought into it - it was a blink decision - 8 days, riding everyday, going to places i've not sen before - sounded like my kind of stuff to do. calle dup home and "told" that i'm going ( one advantage of beinga grown up is that you don't ask permissions, you tell them :) thought u live in the same house with your parents...)
Soon i was done with the papers submisison and now the next thing to figure out is how to get to Ahmedabad. ride was th efirst though but again hadn't done it ever so was not too particular about whether it was a good idea or not, esp. because of the inexperience on riding on sch long journeys on road here in India. after considering the rush in trains/ bookings decided that i need to get the tickets done and will try to pull in the motorcycle on the same train and that would be the easiest. but again was hovering the thought of riding all the way through on my mind, only needed a mild push to go for it and i knew it in my heart that i'm going ot do it - ride the bullet from home to Ahmadabad straight up...
soon enough i got in touch with a couple of guys on email who wanted to ride along to Ahmadabad so it was decided that we are all riding, got the train tickets cancelled out and started preparing for the long haul...
before the ride:
had my shoei taken out from the store room, got my jacke pulled out as well, the back support, gloves etc. these things came out after over a yr. they were used with my CBR the last time, purchased some knee/shin protectors and got spare cables etc.
got basic preperation done but nothign too into detail - was wanting it to be a less than too organsied a trip - so intentionaly left a few things undefined/ as is.
and then the experience started on 11th friday morning @ 4:00 am - i packedup a bagpack with basic essentials - it was still atleast 15 kgs in wieght - and kicked the bullet @ 2669 kms to start off my adventure ride from home. got to ghodbunder road where i met up with vinit and pavan, we syned up for a few minutes and started off to our journey towards ahmedabad.
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| starts @ 2669 |
breakfast in daman was good, but we got delayed due to formallities of picking up the permit etc. nonetheless we were on our way to surat around 11 form daman and then a few moe delays here and there got us upto surat by around 1 - stoped by for lunch and then started off further on to reach lots of stop points and ultimately ahmedabad by around 9:30ish
SNAP! right outsie ahmd ciy, my clutch cable snapped off and i pulled over to the side of the busy narol naka. got the cable out of the bag and called up for help to vinit and my BIL - hirenkumar, before they came around i had already taken out the original broken cable and was abt. to replace it with the new one. was extremely impressed with the simplicity with which you can do the clutch cable change - you might do it w/o even a single tool - with your own bare hands and maybe gloves - it was that simple!!!
the next day was introductions and then departure was early morning th next day from ahmd towards kutch, now i could give an acount of what exactly happened and how and so on but that you can get even by reading any of the bogs/ run down of the trip anywhere. what i want to put on records are hose few moments of this trip that've left an impression on my mind and those moments are how i'll ultimately remmember this trip
1st day in the little rann -the real deal started, we were riding on the terrain thats called "RANN" it's basically parched soil that was wet once upon a time and then the moisture was lost which tearsup the soil - almost like dead skin, the idea is to ride on it on pre-driven roads because otherwise the terrain could be surprising for you.
the fact that when a vehicle rides on this terrain, it leaves a mark - kinda like a groove that's abt. half an inch deep tells you that the flat terrain only looks flat, it may suddenly sqoosh in and the bike may react to this dipping differently depending upon the speed, balancing conditions and the angle at which the wheel is riding on it. ideal thing to do is to keep the handle loose, legs close to the motorcycle and handle straight and of course speed that keeps you comfortable and on the terrain, a tip that when reminded comes in handy early on in such ride
when i was doing 90-100 kmph on the rann, there was a sense of thrill goign thru mymind, the bike vibrating , engine thumping, wind blowing hard, also keeping the sped up with fellow riders so that you don't get lost/ left behind and you tryin to make sue you don't hit a wet patch that can be dangerous for you, it's all of these elements that make riding on that little rann a unique experience, something that sems pretty boring but whiel you are riding into nowhere on the long stretch of "flat" land, there are so many things happenieng between the rider, his bike and the road below that it's nothin less than a roller coaster ride!
Riding @ 110 kmph on tar road with best visibility - thee have been distinctively only a handful of times wen i have trid he max limit on both myself as well as my machine. it as on hwy 280 from mountain view to SF on my CBR600RR when i had done 100 mph. at that moment i knew that this is probably the highest i've ever gone (apart from when i was sitin in aircrafts); that thrill is something else al together, and wierd thing is that the thrill lasts only for a few moments. and then sanity kicks in and you realize that what you are doing is pretty dangerous and u cannot give anything a chance to ruin it for you for ever, so then you readily let got on he acci and soon the thrill is replaced by a wOw and then a phew...so it's one of those things where you only want to enjoy it momentarily and keep i that way..(in some level i think it's pretty close to going to a stripclub isn't it..if you started doin it on a regular basis, it's risky, plus it looses the thrill factor ;) )
somethign similar was experienced when i tried out the bullet to 110 kmph, flat road no sign of animal/ human on the road and enough room to try the max but due to the way the bullet is designed i can tell that it's not a bike for high speeds at all, it feels like a very light machine at such high speeds, a small pebble or a little dip/ bump on the road can ruin it for you big time...so i did try110 once and then kept it that way for about 20-25 seconds and then realized that it's not a smart idea esp. on a road that's not too familiar, again that sanity kicked in and i bid farewell to the thrill factor.
a glimpse of the nilgai - an animal that looks part donkey, part buffalo, part giraffe! was riding on a deserted road when suddenly the terrain started showing me some green and while i was appreciating the vegetation around and suddenly i look to my right over the shoulder - this wierd looking curious thing popping it's head out and running towards the road. for a moment i comprehended it to be a donkey - but then it was too tall for a donkey, could it be a horse? it was too high for a horse as well, took a second glance again and saw it was nothing that i had seen before. it was only after the ride that day in he night when other riders talked about what they saw it was confirmed that the animal all of saw was a nilgai - an animal thts rare.
riding to BOP muchi was another experience of a lifetime - riding on stones/ boulders was what it was, thee was no road but only certain white markings that borderline the stones that you are supposed to ride on from the stones that you are not supposed to. while i was riding on those, i felt pretty bad for my bike, poor thing was dashing on and bouncing off of so many different sized stones that it was a very bumpy ride.
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