Motorcycle Diaries - VIII

Seven in the evening, and you've ridden for about ten hours. You've been through pouring rain, through a tough winding ghat, through three different states, and you've just had a hot meal, a hot shower, and an hour of lazing around.

Your body is in the pleasant ache stage, your eyelids are a little droopy, your head keeps nodding off, and all you want is a hot cuppa of something, a paperback novel, and lights off in about an hour or so.

What you do NOT want is a bike that refuses to start after you top her tank, and the prospect of driving through God-forsaken countryside through the night, so that you can report into work the morning after.

After mugh cajoling, some kicking and some pointed questions about her ancestry, the Suzuki finally deigned to come to life, revving through the r.p.m's in a decidedly reluctant manner. And we clambered on, and set off on the last final stretch. Three hundred and sixty kilometers in pitch black darkness, with a bike that is just about worn out and two riders who couldn't care less anymore. The only thing that kept us on was sheer bloodymindedness.

You don't give up on a ride and climb into a truck. The thought passed through my mind, and I'm sure bhaisaab thought longingly about it too, but neither of us gave the notion serious thought. Because.

Five minutes into the ride, we found out that the headlight on the bike was giving us next to no illumination. We could barely figure out the road ahead of us, let alone the aberrations on the surface. And aberrations there were aplenty.

The only thing to do was to tack on to a passing truck and stay behind her, using her path as a guide. Which is what we did for about a couple of hours, until that outstanding alumni of SP College, Andheri (E), Mumbai, figured out that the beam was askew because it was pointing towards the bloody sky. A couple of taps on the headlamp assembly, and it was as if God had said, "Let there be light!" .

And after which we drove on, and on and on. One hour shifts, rider crouched miserably out in the front, peering up ahead, and pillion hunched miserably at the back, eyes firmly closed, and trying to grab forty winks. Exchange and repeat.

Stop every two hours for a cup of chai, a cigarette, and some butt unclenching exercises.

And on and on and on.

An omelette here, and a paratha there, a cuppa here, and another there, until we finally reached Chitradurga, where, it was patently clear, we could not go on. There were another 200 kilometers to go, and it was about two in the morning. We figured we'd take a room for about a couple of hours, sleep and then drive on. Only to discover that the peoples of Chitrdurga are very decidedly asleep at two in the morning. Any amount of banging on the doors of various lodges across that accursed town elicited nary a single raised eyebrow, let alone an enquiring clerk.

And which is why Castellino and Kulkarni drove their tired steed into a petrol pump, paid a disbelieving watchman the princely sum of fifty rupees , and clambered into an abandoned schoolbus. Stretched out on those wondrously uncomfortable seats and tried the Good Night! Strategy.

Which did not work, because that abandoned school bus was the local watering hole for all the bloody mosquitoes in the area. Buzzing disconsolately in that excuse for a vehicle, the buggers couldn't believe their luck, and got down to work with a vengeance. About 90 minutes and a seriously depleted bloodstream later, we clambered out, clambered on, and drove out.

The good news was, the road was a lot smoother from here on in. We were able to peak the bike and let her rip into the kilometers.

One more utterly ghastly meal of Dal Rice (Oye, dude! What was that damn thing called? Khuska?) later, at six thirty in the morning, we were about 60 kilometers outside of Bangalore, with one last stretch to go.

Which we completed in due course, riding into the city more dead than alive.

Got off the bike, clicked our helmets together, grinned at each other, and made our weary way up the staircase.

Done.

1500 kilometers of the craziest bike ride that I know of. A couple of near death brouhahas, two punctures, naps on the roadside, and naps in abandoned vehicles, countless cups of chai and the most horrifying ghat in India. In retrospect, something nobody should ever attempt.

But I'm sitting here and I got a smile on my face.

Bhaisaab will read and re-read this, and he'll have a smile on his face.

And forty years later, by the fireside with a couple of glasses of scotch by our side, we'll still have a smile on our faces.

And that, my friends, is worth all the caution in the world.

I don't have that bloody switch in my head; the Good Lord missed that bit of circuitry in my cranium.

Yeah. :-)