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']]}I recently travelled (on a warm Saturday) to a small fort, south of Lonavla for a trek. I started out thinking it would be really 'cool' to travel on my bike to the foot of the fort, hike up, check out the views, be one with nature and all that other stuff, and come back all fresh to face urban chaos. I was so wrong.
The exact one-way distance from my apartment (in Bombay) to the base of the fort is 138 kms. It took me exactly 4 hours to get there and about 5 to get back. Both the onward and return trips included a half hour break. That makes my average travel time to 34 km/h. Please note that I was driving an old, but yet in a fairly good shape, Royal Enfield. If you are unable to visualise my frustration, you are part stupid, part non-biker, part in need to read on...
Lazy me started the bike/trek/chill day at 10 am. Agreed not the perfect time to head out of the city, but then, one would think being a Saturday and with only a little over 100 kms to cover on a fairly powerful bike, things could not be that bad. The journey from the center of Bombay to the outskirts of Bombay however had other intentions. The whole city was out....god knows what they were upto at 10 in the bloody morning.
So, I weave through traffic, trucks, potholes, smoke, heat, cows sleeping across the road, women crossing the road with four children in hand and looking on the wrong side, old men crossing the road at the speed of a handicapped tortoise, cargo rickshaws driving on the right side of the road, slow trucks overtaking really slow trucks, traffic lights in the middle of national highways, more potholes (the ones that are almost the size of small villages), crossroads with no signs indicating where the hell am i supposed to turn, toll plazas with 4000 speed breakers before and after the booths, another random 4000 speed breakers on potholed highways, police check nakas, suicidal rural dogs running across the highway, tractors moving on the wrong side of the road (this is a very scary experience), cars trying to overtake from the left at 90 km/h (please note i am travelling at 34 km/h), last minute road diversions - some with warnings, some without, and....eerr...i think thats about it.
I finally get to the foot of the hill tired and with hands aching from the constant 'klutching' and 'accelerating'. I go up the hill, check out the fort, eat some chikki and a couple of bananas, soak in the views, take a few pics and start heading back.
As frustrated as i am reaching the fort, thanks to the couple of hours off the bike, i turn into the typical, hopeful and optimistic Indian and am eager to get on the bike to head back towards the gates of hell.
Of course all the above elements are still in the same place as they were when i drove to the fort. To make things more interesting, it is now dark. So some new forces are now in play as well - a helmet that disperses light from incoming vehicles making the view ahead fairly distorted, drivers who are too insecure to just have their lights on (they have them on high beam permanently, in fact i think a lot of drivers have their lights set on high beam and locked in place in the rare event that they might take it off high by error), roads with no white lines/markers (so with the wonderful combination of highbeams and no line markers, i drove a large part of the 138 kms of the return journey in pure darkness), bikes and cars overtaking you with no lights - at all - so out of the blue you get overtaken by something you did not see coming and are scared shitless, cows sleeping on the highway under dark blind spots (which you happen to see only as you pass them at 80 km/h), people crossing the road blissfully under dark blind spots, more traffic getting into Bombay, Sumos driving like there is no tomorrow, potholes that you cannot see, speedbreakers that you cannot see....err...i think there was more, but my eye has started to twitch just thinking of the stress...so am going to stop for now....
Its weird how so many people talk about how Indians travellers are not as adventurous as their western counterparts. I beg to differ. A road trip on desi highways is far more dangerous than any rock climbing or mountain expedition.
Anyway, at the end of the trip, my technologically handicapped pillion rider deleted ALL the images of the few tolerable moments of the day!! What a perfect ending.
