Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The $80 Taxi Ride

The $80 Taxi Ride

An apt name for a taxi ride between the financial capital and the capital of India, aka Bombay – Delhi, more than 1400kms apart. The seeds of the trip were laid 3 weeks in advance when I booked train tickets for myself and Aru on the Rajdhani Express waitlisted at 350, awesome it seems entire Mumbai is headed to Delhi for festivities.

Anyways we were positive that we would get confirmation as the final chart was still to be prepared, we go off to the railway station, three burgers and one coke down, man that was heavy.

Status: Confirmation milega, dekhtey hain kaisey naheen milega.

We had taken heart from the fact that the waitlist was reducing by 10 everyday but that, as maths would tell you was not fast enough, we were left stranded on the railway station with 110 waiting, someone give us space in the pantry car only, someone, ANYONE!!

Status: bye bye train.

Next logical step was to find another medium out of this city, airport calling. We caught a taxi to the airport next, it takes two freaking hours to travel 20kms in Mumbai during rush hour, we left at 1800hrs and arrived at the airport at 2000hrs approx, and their were trucks and mini trucks all along the route which said ‘Mera Bharat Mahaan’, now how can one take that positively when one cannot board a train, cannot move on the roads and the airlines charge Rs. 23000 for a ticket that normally costs Rs.4500.

Status: What the f!@#?

By this time we had gone crazy laughing, standing outside the ticket counter, here we encountered a couple who had also had the same fate as ours with the only difference being that they refused an offer to go in the pantry car, man, how is that I never got that offer. The point is how do we get out of Bombay now, the rails are full, the planes are for millionaires only and the roads well with 1400kms between the two cities that will be tough.

Status: Eureka!

Lets go by taxi, call up people find out the rates, we need five people to keep our pockets from getting too light and a taxiwala crazy enough to even consider our offer. Well well, in this world there all kinds of travelling people

1. Our type – Who get a little late in booking tickets
2. Couple type – Who are a little late in booking too but did not want to ride in a pantry car
3. Batchmate type – Very late in booking tickets
4. Senior type – Who did not book tickets at all

Now putting all of them together makes it 7 people plus one taxi driver, all in all eight people. We have found a crazy taxiwala thanks to Mr. Rai and Rentimental.com. Here we go, the couple in tow and our friends too add. We were to start for Delhi from the Andheri East residence of Mr. Korpal at 0400hrs of the following day. We first went to Andheri station to cancel the train tickets which I managed just 10 mins before the closing of the counter. I headed back to where I had left Aru and the couple on finding them I came to know that the couple were flying and not coming with us, their maternal uncle had objected to the idea of them travelling by taxi to Delhi since they were about to get married.

Status: Bye bye couple, nice knowing you, keep in touch

From here it was to Mr. Korpal’s place for dinner and overnight halt for the taxi. Here after calculations we realized that we were paying a little on the higher side with the couple gone from the list of adventurers. Here we thought about it all and by all I REALLY MEAN ALL. Mr. Korpal tried all Bombay contacts who were going to Delhi and were stranded planting the taxi idea in their heads, I thought of selling the idea to my friend whose end destination was Ranchi, where all can people be driven to preserve their pockets, Sigh!

Status: The five TAXITEERS
Kartik (Batchmate Type) – Destination Delhi
Nishant (Senior Type) – Destination Gwalior
Sandeep (Senior Type) – Destination Gwalior
Aru (Our type) – Destination Delhi
Hanumant (Our Type) – Destination Delhi

Ok, we have passengers, we have a taxiwalla and we have two routes to choose from, superb. All set to roll, lets choose the route. Here are the characteristics of the two routes:

Mumbai-Ahmedabad-Jaipur Delhi

• Longer route
• Superb road, part of Golden Quadrilateral
• Goon free roads, can ply at night too
• Fastest known road to Delhi

Mumbai-Indore-Gwalior-Agra-Delhi

• Shorter route
• Bad roads
• The famous Indian Bad lands of Chambal are enroute and we will have to pass those at night as per the current plan
• Goons all the way, cannot ply at night
• Less frequently used route

Status: Senior type wants to go via Gwalior, our and batchmate type wants to go via Ahemedabad

We are a democracy, majority always wins and three is way more than two, we decided to go by the Ahmedabad route we love our lives and we want to REACH home. Here we go, we pick up our seniors and are out of B’bay by 0530hrs, with beer in our hands, plenty of hope and grumbling senior type. We get right down to the task of getting home; we are all asleep within 30mins of the trip starting and are sleeping for the next two hours, before we know it we are about to cross Surat. This is where we realize that we have to have some fun too and people are woken up one by one, perfect timing by our batchmate type Aru to drop the nuclear bomb, LETS PLAY ANTAKSHARI. Bass yahee baakee thaa, roko gaadee mujhey utarna hai. Hell man, this game sucks.

After an unsuccessful car roko aandolan, I was forced to play Antakshari, it is a different matter all together that I took a good part of 2 hrs to say yes for it. There on I was scratching my head all the way till Ahmedabad where we finally called it a day and stopped playing the goddamn game. New source of entertainment watch the scenery in the fading light. This part of any trip is the best, beautiful colours and the aravalis to help with the beauty. The sad part, we were just about entering Rajasthan and it was night.

We halted at Udaipur, desperately short of cash. First, stop ‘theka’, I mean seriously we went to a ‘theka’ exhausted our last reserves of cash on bottles of beer and went on to the ATMs. We found HDFC and ICICI, the ICICI ATM was out of cash and the HDFC bank did not like our faces and said with contempt, transaction failed. Third ATM, Bank of Baroda, I think this and HDFC bank ATMs have the same surveillance module as even this one did not like our faces much and said pretty much the same thing, transaction failed.

Superb situation, plenty of beer and no cash, we explain the situation to our cabbie who to our surprise happily said, I have enough on me, I love him, not only are we using his services but now we are officially his debtors, wow! We started from there onto Haldighati, although we missed taking the Chittorgarh route which would have saved us atleast 3 hrs but we did not seek guidance and moved on at night. We stopped at a road side dhaba along the way bang in the middle of the hills with nothing else in sight. He had nice warm cooked dal, mixed veg and Nan which made our first proper north Indian meal since morning sitting on Charpoys, truckwala style.

Our cabbie who had been driving almost nonstop apart from the short breakfast near Bharuch and the halt at Udaipur took an hours nap after which he had his fill in Nans and dal. In the meanwhile we were adding minerals to the forest soil and chatting away to heavens. This was also our first experience with the coming winters and there was definite bite in the cold air. I got myself onto the car backseat for a nap. Point to be made here, our senior type, Mr. Sandeep had answered our cabbies request for a stupid-o- hour front seat partner to help him keep awake. While I was taking a nap he joined me in doing so which I took as a preparatory one for the stupid-o-hour watch. Nice one sir, here comes the cabbie ready to roll and this is when Mr. Sandeep crossed the threshold from an unknown person into folklore, he did not wake up and I had to do the duty, what the !@#$.

Here we go, me and cabbie (Chuddi Pals) and the dead weight at the back of the car passing Haldighati, Maharana Pratap territory, and I could not see anything flat for miles and miles, beautiful curving four lane roads, forested hills, sprinkling of trucks here and there and SPEEDBREAKERS. They built speed breakers in multiples of hundred here, and I will bet a hundred rs. to prove that there are more breakers on the road passing through each village then there are people inside. We cut left, we cut right, we jumped up and came back down but still to no avail the breakers were smarter than us, we lost a parking light also in our fight against breakers.

After 6 hours of strict vigil me and my chaddi pal decided to call it a day and took our two hour naps somewhere between Jaipur and Kishangarh. When I woke up next we were reaching Jaipur and staring at a ‘Sulabh Shochalaya’, man sometimes it can be such a relief to read that name. phewwwww!!

After having reduced our weights by approximately 2kgs each we aimed for Mathura. Passing Pink City took its time and we passed through Sisodia Gardens on our way to Mathura via Bharatpur, this journey was not very eventful apart from the fact that the buses here could have put trains to shame with the no. of people that were inside and on top of the bus, I swear to god each bus carried an equivalent of 2 train bogies of passengers and I am equally sure that most of those sitting on top must have been filtered by the overhead electricity wires, nothing for the bus driver to worry about his bus is automatically reducing its weight. Onto Bharatpur, whose arrival is announced by the road, we had to get of the golden quadrilateral and to old roads for which they also had a toll tax, damn these fools, whats the toll tax for if you cant spell road. Mathura here we come, jump, fall…… BOING!

At Mathura we bid adieu to our senior types, thank you for your patience, Bon Voyage! We were on the outskirts of Delhi in barely two hours thanks to the superb Delhi-Agra Highway, it’s a dream road till the time you enter Faridabad and reach Badarpur, one look out of your window and it is easy to understand why we are going to take a longer time in getting home in Delhi than we did to get to Delhi from Mathura. After entering Delhi at 4 we reached home around 6. Damn these metro people for putting a ribbon tied ‘The END’ to our memorable trip.

We will hopefully do this more often!

Thank you all types, it was a wonderful experience and a memorable one.

Friday, October 17, 2008

The Tail Light Guided Missile

Ride: Mumbai – Jwahar-Dabhosa – Mumbai Ride aka S3 Trip (Serene Landscape, Smooth Roads and Super Waterfall)

Distance – 400kms (from home)

Ride Duration (incl. leisure time) – 18hrs

Why did we go – Headaches of a city life, discovering new avenues of sounds from the bike, an ass which had not ached in a long time, comparing the avg. depth of potholes in Maharashtra vis-à-vis rest of India and last but not the least pleasures of paradise.

What did we plan to plan for – camera, floats, sleeping bags, spare parts, saddle bags,2 days of riding, place to stay, mobiles and chargers, change of clothes, a stay

What did we end up planning for – Full stomachs, full tank, change of clothes and a haversack

Important things we forgot - camera (we thought of making up for that with my camera phone), mobile charger (Sigh!), floats, saddle bags, place to stay

What we found – Initially a lot of potholes with some road sprinkled here and there, butter smooth jungle roads with awesome road side hill views and the best waterfall we have seen till date.

Results of the ride – A refreshed brain, a tired butt, a crying m ‘cycle and one helluva day

Most important lesson of the ride – NEVER PLAN FOR A RIDE, plan for your ass.

We, me and my friend Malik, started for our ride on a fine October morning with the sole objective of killing the boredom that had set in our lives due to multiple weekdays and weekends spent earning, sleeping, drinking and eating. We had decided on a place called Jwahar, hearing about a beautiful waterfall and an awesome route, we decided to take the plunge without any planning whatsoever except a lot of food and water. We found out all the routes possible on phone on the last night and were on our way in the morning still not decided which route to take.

On reaching the crossroads which split the various routes we decided on taking the route which we had last heard of being Kuccha.

The possible routes were:

1.

Mumbai-Manor-Jwahar-Dabhosa
2.

Mumbai-Bhiwandi-Wada-Vikramgadh-Jwahar-Dabhosa
3.

Mumbai-Bhiwandi-Wada-Kodala-Jwahar-Dabhosa

We had heard the second route as beautiful and the third as beautiful and Kuccha, with obvious enthusiasm and without care for either our ride or our butts, we decided on Option 3. Then began a day which I will say is the best ride I have been on till date.

On passing Bhiwandi, we discovered that the state govt. had been more engrossed in strategic placement of potholes than on making the road. As a result of which on an average, in the stretch between Bhiwandi and Wada, there were unavoidable potholes every 400mts. Please read the description below to discover the strategic prowess of the Maharashtra govt.

*

If you move only in your lane – You will have to replace the suspension every 10kms
*

If you change lanes constantly – Your suspension is guaranteed to last for 20kms.
*

If you ride on the wrong side of the road – the oncoming traffic is empowered to fine you for breaking rules, the vending machine for that is installed in the underbelly of all vehicles, especially jeep taxis.
*

Pothole size – All potholes in one lane are warranted to be of different depths, with maximum depth of 1ft., diameter of the same can vary with no maximum limit

This is some serious thought man, where do the babus get training for this.

Ok now, we crossed Wada and took to the road to Kodala, fearing the worst, as the road width reduced to 2 lanes from the 4 lane we had been on all the way. But here is the biggest surprise of the day, for the entire 35kms stretch of jungle that we encountered there was not even one pot hole. Now where does this forest deptt. Learn to make its roads, I must say, to find roads in such good conditions just after rains is amazing, mind you there had been no fresh layering on the roads for at least a year from what we could make out.

This forest was a welcome break from the sweltering heat; it was pleasant with many streams constant canopy and unending hill side views. These hill side views I must say put anything I have seen in Maharashtra so far to shame; clean, tourist free, no deforestation, wonderful roads and almost zero traffic; the views were such that we could stop for a photo every 3-4kms had the camera battery permitted. We were going at a leisurely pace, no plans help a lot you see, we took a full 7hrs to travel the distance one way, also, we were eating every now and then. At one of the places in the jungle the view was such that we thought how is it that the Himalayan landscape has come to Maharashtra. I will describe what I saw, the road was overlooking a valley which had a stream running by the side of the road about 150-200ft below, on the other side of the stream were grasslands sprinkled with trees and at the end of that we had hills covered with forests, the road was constantly running along the valley maintaining its height from the valley floor. We could see hills all around this landscape and it seemed to be locked in by hills, the plains were not to be seen anywhere, the cherry on the cake was zero traffic due to which we could hear the water running in the stream and the cool forest breeze.



After crossing the forest we reached Kodala then went to Jwahar, where we saw the historical memorial to the Chattrapati and also the local Raja’s palace which can be at best described as a Haveli, considering what we had seen before the landscape between Kodala and Jwahar was disappointing, what was adding to our painful thoughts were the short patches of bad roads from now on, at one point we even thought that the waterfall will disappoint too. But that was not the case; at the end of a beautiful ride was a 300ft waterfall about 500ft below the side of the road in a gorge. I have seen many waterfalls but few would beat the sight of this one, it was perfect, set in a gorge below the surrounding landscape, it was surrounded by a pool of water with sunlight only on one part of the pool, a perfect place to spend an entire day. From where we were sitting at the pool side there was a constant breeze permanent shade and constant spray of water, it was paradise. For the entire day that we were there, not one lost soul was seen.

We left our little paradise at 6 in the evening climbing up to the nature trails camp looking for accommodation who then informed us that we have to book from Thane to get accommodation. Here we were with no place to stay and with night approaching fast, I took a decision to add to the thrill of the day with the thrill of a night safari in the jungle on a bike. We were on our way back to Mumbai at 6.30pm, AWESOME, we are 180kms from home, I am never going to plan any ride ever, they have to be compulsorily unplanned.

We reached Kodala, in about hour and a half and had our dinner there, starting 140kms of travel at 9pm with 35kms of dense jungles ahead. Man oh man, was this an experience, just to highlight, we did not see any vehicle for 35kms in the middle of a jungle at the dead of night. We even stopped our vehicle once turned the lights and engines off, we felt like we have gone deaf, it was exhilarating to see the jungle bathed in the moonlight with only insect songs being audible and a cool breeze, what more can we want from a day’s trip, fun and invigorating.

The roads ahead were as mentioned before, therefore, they did there job of getting us back to earth combined with the constant full beams of oncoming traffic, this was a serious pain until we found our messiah, a speeding ambulance with a superb driver and a patient inside. We coined a new term for this kind of riding ‘The Tail Light Guided Missile’. We followed the ambulance like crazy and did not let it distance from us. It helped us avoid all potholes, bike cum speed breakers and increased our average speed. What we should have covered in 1.5-2hrs we did in about an hour’s time. The ambulance blared its siren through all the traffic with us in tow. This was a life cum butt cum bike saver ambulance. ‘Thanks a lot’ to that driver and also a ‘Get well soon’ to the patient inside, hope he is up and about by now.

This is one trip I would recommend to everyone; see it to believe it people.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

So says chillin!

Never has one felt so frustrated in life that one just can’t think about anything else but failure to launch on the right path, failure in converting a dream into reality, a reality that is oxygen. Despite efforts that are no better than the best that can be made, there is no movement. The hinges of future plans suffer from lack of oiling; they creak in unison at every effort to open up the future. Opportunities coming for the future are so shrouded in doubt that time taken to clear the doubt kills the opportunity itself, never has one felt so hopeless in life.

It seems that it is sacrilege if one walks his own path, a path paved by him, maintained by him and leading to the destination built by him. What does one do, does he crib, and does he raise a hue and cry over it? None seems like a medication for this eternal pain, the medication for such pain does not exist, at least not tangibly. The pain is such that one stops looking for medication, he wants to sleep a sleep where his dream is the reality, where his desired future is the present and he is living every moment of it. Never has one slept so peacefully, the thought of waking up from it is blasphemy.

After all, peace is what he has in his sleep; peace is what we seek at the end of a journey called life. Peace is what we have when we achieve our goals, goals which can be personal or professional; it does not matter both are woven together and inseparable. Peace is a small word but it is something desirable by all and defined by all on their own. It does not have one meaning but many, meanings that we search for till our throats are parched our clothes wet and soiled with the sweat and toil that we put in in search of our own meaning. Does it pay for us to toil so much, for some of it does for some of us it does not. For here enters another essential of our lives, it is called destiny.

Destiny is some thing we write with our own two hands, whether we reach there or not depends on how we market it to ourselves, we can be either sold on the idea or someone else will pay a better price and own it before you know it. How many people in this world want their destiny being written by someone else, none.

It is time to wake up, time to splash some water on that face of yours, time to open your eyes wide and stretch yourself like never before and finally time to beat the hell out of life and take that last juice of accomplishment out of it. One should not know any path other than his own, one should not leave any stone unturned to make his journey a success. We have only one life, a life in which we can either die unknown or go down fighting still unknown but knowing very well there was no effort spared in getting there or being known like no other and dying a peaceful human.

The choice is ours, the life is ours and the success is ours, so says Chillin