The Time I Grew Wings!

My first major travel of 2020 is over and it was epic in every single way. Honestly I got cold feet just a couple days before the trip that I almost cancelled all my tickets. I had three different people from three different circles convincing me to just go on the trip. And oh my! What an adventure it was. I would surely have regretted missing out on the adventure of a lifetime. So I was not all excited like Bilbo Baggins running from the shire when I started for the airport. With a book as my company until I reach my actual destination I was skeptical about the trip all around. I reach Ahmedabad and my friend suggested I could spend time by the Sabarmati Riverfront until my bus that night. That place gave me the most travel sense to begin with. The wind in my hair and the book on my hand was what I needed to put some travel spirit in me. So I just sat there taking selfies and putting up instagram stories and what not. The time comes for me to board my bus to Bhuj.

With Day 0 done and dusted I reach Bhuj at about 4am and my friend happily comes to pick me up from the bus stop. The place is so darn cold and we manage to reach the City Guest House. After some well deserved sleep and rest we roam around the city a little. And then we head out to the Bhujia Fort for the sunset. Climbing broken stairs after a scrumptious but modest Gujarati thali is a very wrong move. But the view once we got to the top was just amazing. With the sun rays coming down on us and the walls to our back, we just sat there talking but mostly basking in the lovely golden silence.

I was pretty scared about the next day given that we were going to drive quite a bit and I am not what you call an excellent confident driver.

Day 1 and we all gear up. I am riding with four other people all on their Royal Enfield Bullets and what am I driving? A nice little activa! Yes an activa for a biking trip! After a good serving of poha and kacchi dabeli we start our journey. Now I did the fortunate thing of not asking where exactly we were heading. I basically did not know our exact destination towards which we were driving and I didn’t care. I was more concerned about maintaining speed with the group and just being careful. We had to surrender all electronic devices at the check post because we were now entering the Border Security Force’s turf. To go beyond that point one has to get prior permission with BSF signed with the vehicle details and rider’s details. So once we crossed that check post there was just one road.

One long winding road with nothing but the white desert-y land on either side of the road. You possibly cannot get lost in that place. Because there is just one road. Which kept reminding me of this one vadivel comedy scene only —–>

My friend(Lets call him M) drives up to me and asks me to keep driving at a nominal speed and off he goes on his bullet. Now it is just me and this very long stretch of road in front of me. At first it was a smooth road and I was able to keep up with the other bikes. Even then a lot of times I would be the last one in the convoy and I sort of started liking the middle of nowhere vibe of that place. My brain started singing and exactly at that moment it somehow dug up this song from some random corner of my head. Guess the correlation with a bike ride helped, but it was funny how I have watched this song maybe a couple times and I was able to sing most of it yet I could not for the life of me remember all the lyrics to my favourite song that I hear all the time.

Apart from this song the other one I could sing in my head was Rasali from Accham Yenbathu Madamaiyada. My brain refused to bring up any other song for the whole journey and even if I tried I couldn’t get past the first four lines of any song. A lot of times the desert reminded me of this Siragugal song from Sarvam. But nope! All I could sing were these two bike songs and nothing else stuck. While I was having this struggle with my head there came the gravel filled stretch of roads. Every time I would raise the speed a little I would see these bad stretches and would try my best to keep up the balance. I was sure I was going to fall in one of these stretches. Given that I wasn’t driving above 20kmph M somehow caught up with me and said “Don’t come to a complete halt. That is when you will fall. Stop accelerating and just go with the momentum. When you reach the bad stretch of the road just keep up your balance.”

For most of the trip I was like Dory chanting “Just keep going” exactly in her tone. And then finally we reach the destination which was the frigging India-Pakistan Border at Vighakot. Right in front of me was the border of another country, another culture, a whole bunch of people who lead a completely different life than we do. It was just so surreal that if there were not guys holding guns on either side of that fence, I could just walk into another country. I felt so small just starring the huge expanse of land in front of me. I looked around and I saw the awesome BSF guys just chatting with my friends and I could hardly even talk. It was just humbling in the most weird way.

Since now I know how to ride through slightly bad roads, I gained a bit more confidence and rode well. Still I was totally behind all the other bikes. So every time they stopped to relax, I would just keep going to gain a head start which will all be a waste in the next ten minutes when the guys speed right past me.

And then the actual race began. We have to get to the Rann Utsav before sunset. The stupid orange ball was already on the far west and we had to get to the salt ground soon. So all of us put on our invisible racer game face and started driving like our lives depended on it. It was a race against the sun. Honestly the adrenaline rush in trying to race a giant ball of fire is something all of us should experience once because it is too hard to even put in words. Finally by the time I parked my scooter and stood up, the sun had started setting painting the whole sky in the most beautiful shade of orange I have ever seen. I took one picture for the sake of recording it somewhere and put my phone away. All I did was stand and stare at the big star sinking beneath the white horizon. It was as if a timelapse option was enabled because the whole thing got over within minutes. Or maybe it was so beautiful that I did not realize how long I stood like that watching the horizon. There is just something so beautiful about horizons, I shall talk about them some other time!

Walking over salt is such a funny experience. After spending a little time at the Utsav we now had another race. We have to get back to Bhuj before it gets too dark and too cold. What M did not tell me was that it was the bitter cold I had to anticipate. It got so cold so fast, that I could not feel any of my fingers enough to rev the scooter enough to go past 40 kmph. Then came the fun game. M asked me to just keep up with the thunderbird in front me. So I suited up with an extra pair of gloves and started driving. Focussed on nothing but the bike in front of me for I could not afford to think about the iciness that was seeping through to my bones. That is when I realized I cannot remember song lyrics even if my life depended on it. When we reached the restaurant at Bhuj, it was around 10 PM and we calculated to have ridden a total of 400km on that day alone. After the most hearty dinner I have had in a while, we returned to our rooms and the moment my body hit that rigid as hell bed I dozed off.

Day 2 was supposed to be a little more relaxed. But just when we were about to start we saw that the scooter had a flat tire and I had to ride pillion with another guy, lets call him K. We start driving towards the mandvi beach. And I feel so disappointed because riding pillion is not as fun as riding by yourself. Plus the bike makes such a loud dub dub sound that you can’t even hear your own thoughts clearly much less hear anything the guy in front of you is saying. Turns out that K had been having a whole conversation with me for about 15 minutes before he actually heard me yell that I can’t hear anything. So the next one hour was just dub dub and me looking all around me noticing the flower beds and the highway scenes. It was almost noon when we reach the blue beach of Mandvi.

Even with that many tourists, the beach was so clean (compared to the ones I grew up going to) After a really comical camel ride, a stupidly fun photo shoot and relaxing on the beach sand, we start back to Bhuj.

There is one last stop for the day, which was the handicraft village at Bhuj. By evening I get back my scooter and we head to the Vande Mataram Memorial. The whole place was scattered with huts where each hut had a specialty handicraft from the villages nearby. You get a variety of handloom textiles, hand dyed clothing, handmade knives, copper bells and wooden kitchenware, block printed textiles and Bandhani print sarees. With the shopping done for the trip, we pack our bags and hop onto the bus to get to Ahmedabad.

On the whole this was one my most audacious of travel experiences. I started with trembling fear and ended up being more confident not just about driving but also a little about life too. For bike trips teach you a little more about life than you could expect. Someday I want to learn how to ride a Royal Enfield so I can ride equally amongst the other guys. Even though I rode a scooter all along, I am going to go ahead and proudly call myself a biker!

 

Thank you Madhav for taking me up on this wonderful journey and making it a very memorable one!