Live fast, die young

I don’t know who said that first. Was it Jim Morrison? I don’t know, but I remember hearing it for the first time over a cup of tea, sitting in the office cafeteria. Two guys with nothing to do, and an absolutely bull-shit statement like that could never lead to anything, right?

Wrong!

Exactly two hours later, we were already on our way out of the city, on our first bike trip!

This is the story of the beginning of our bike-trip adventures. My good friend Unni and I have been on many amazing bike-trips since then, but we always look back and wonder if the first one was for real! It was unbelievably spontaneous, obviously unplanned (first bike-trip, remember?), sometimes painful, but by far the most exciting and memorable trip we ever made. In fact this one bike trip taught us everything we know about making long trips today!

So, here goes....

One lazy afternoon at the office, Unni and I were sitting in the cafeteria and having tea (as usual) and the conversation drifted to us making a bike trip. Goa came up as one of the destinations, and it took us all of five minutes to decide that this was it! So we went back to our desks, downloaded a blog of some guy's car trip to Goa with some pointers on the roads to take, and left office early. We went back to our apartment, packed a bare minimum of clothes and a blanket into one small backpack (school bag really!), went to the nearest department store to buy a small bag for the SLR and tripod, and took off.

Yes, that's it. Nothing else. No helmets, no scarves, no sunscreen, no sunglasses. Well, I might just as well stop this story right here…………….

Luckily we were wearing our jackets. We only had one bike, Unni's Yamaha Enticer, which proved to be a remarkably reliable bike on all our trips, and we took turns driving.

The Plan (yes, we had a plan!) - We would start in the evening and drive to a place called Mahad, where we would stop for the night. The next morning we would drive to Goa. Short and Simple. .

Lets get outta here!

How difficult can it be to get out of a city? Well, for simplicity's sake, lets just say its very difficult, if you are stupid enough to embark on such a journey at rush hour!!! It took us a good 2 hours to get to the outskirts, where we stopped for dinner. The place was ok and the food was nice. Looking forward to a nice drive now that we were out of the city, we headed towards a crossing at a place called Panvel, and promptly took the wrong turn!

Note: The national highway 17 takes you straight from Mumbai to Goa. Dont be fooled by the word "straight". It just means that if you keep to the NH17, you will get to Goa. Back in 2005, some joker in the office of the highway authorities must have assumed that people could do this without any signs or directions on the highway!

Anyway, we kept driving on this "highway" for over an hour. Only when the highway turned into a narrow road with almost no traffic, did we realise that we may be on the wrong road. So, we stopped at a crossing with a police checkpost to find out where we were. The checkpost was a small room by the road, with its single door and two windows firmly shut. So we looked around and found a couple of guys hanging around nearby. We asked them if this was NH17. They had never heard of it. What about the road to Goa? No luck with that either. So we asked how we could get to Mahad. This they knew.

The road to hell…

It turned out that we could either go back the way we came, and turn left from the Panvel crossing, or cut across to the NH17 by taking a small road where we were standing. We weren’t inclined to go back the way we came, so we took the small road and started out. Oddly, the guy who showed us the road, had asked if we had enough petrol in the bike, and told us not to stop anywhere till we get to a fully-lit four-lane highway (the elusive NH17!!!).

By now it was quite late and we were getting cold. So Unni, having driven so far, took out his blanket from the bag, covered himself well, and I started driving. We went through some deserted wasteland and unlit paths, driving alone except for one other guy on a motorbike who made a cautionary enquiry about petrol in our bike and reminded us not to stop anywhere on this road. Apparently he knew this road. We left him behind and sped across some pretty bad roads. We didn’t stop to wonder about the sound of dogs chasing our bike every once in a while…

After 45 minutes of driving on this road, we got to the NH17 and were relieved to be back on track. This feeling lasted till we realized we were only 20 km from Panvel!

Mission to Mahad

At the point where we joined the highway, there was a huge petrol station. We tanked up the bike on petrol and started for Mahad.

Here’s a tip for someone attempting to make such a trip at night – DON’T attempt it. The highway passes many small villages and towns and is packed with speed-breakers designed probably by some lunatic who was considered too extreme even for the X-games. You will find an incredible mix of road-bumps designed to make your bike take off into space, and rumblers (a series of bumps laid out as a group) designed to shake your bike to pieces. And what’s more, most of them are unmarked!

At first the highway seemed wonderful, and we cruised along at a good speed until we hit our first speed-breakers.  After that, they kept coming at regular intervals. We decided to stop for the night even though we didn’t get to Mahad, since we were tired and shivering from the cold. So we stopped at a highway motel late that night, woke up the guy sleeping at the reception, and settled for a half-decent room since we just wanted to crash for the night. We paid the hotel guy in advance for the room.

The next morning, we woke up early and left by 7:30 a.m. so that we could enjoy the beautiful early morning drive.

 Goa….

The highway to Goa takes you to some places really worth seeing, and with some detours if you have the time, you should see Raigad, Ganapatipule, Ratnagiri, the Janjeera fort and a few other places popular on the west coast.

We drove through some scenic routes and small towns, stopping occasionally to eat, drink and take pictures. By noon, it was really hot, but we kept driving without any protection from the sun and the wind. Driving at 80 – 90 kmph with unprotected faces, the wind can cause more damage than the sun, a fact that we would only discover later.

We finally got to Goa at 7:30 in the evening, and went straight to Baga(or Bagha) in north Goa. There, we managed to get a room at a guest house right on the beach, and moved in. Then we went around the streets of Baga to see if we could find a nice place to eat and drink. We found a place where some musicians were jamming, so we hung around and after a couple of beers, went back to the room and crashed for the night.

The next morning, we woke up to a glorious day with our faces burning. That’s when we realized how badly our faces had got burnt by the sun and wind from the drive. Oh, and before I forget, riding a bike for 12 hours can give you a real pain in the ass. Anyway, after a full breakfast and a trip to Panaji to buy the “ideal” sunscreen (which was quite entertaining, since we knew nothing about it!), we quickly forgot about our problems and started our exploration of Goa.

To cut the story short, we stuck to north Goa and had a good time at the beaches, the churches, the markets, restaurants, cemeteries (!), etc… and our faces kept getting roasted!

Back to Mumbai

After a great time in Goa, we started back for Mumbai early on Sunday morning. This time, we prepared ourselves as well as we could for the drive ahead. We now had sunscreen, bandannas, caps and sunglasses (actually, cheap riding glasses picked up from the flea market!). But this time, the drive started taking a toll on our backsides. After lunch, we bought a pair of square pillow cushions that we put on the seat of the bike and drove the rest of the way sitting on the cushions, providing a bit of entertainment to the passersby.

We were stopped twice along the way by the police who wanted to check if we were smuggling alcohol from Goa or something else! We managed to continue without having to pay the police.

Finally, we managed to get to Mumbai at around 8 that night. Obviously, getting from the outskirts of Mumbai to our flat in Malad was extremely grueling. Firstly, we had already driven 650 kms that day. Secondly, after driving on near-empty highways, we had to drive in the most crowded traffic anyone can imagine. I still don’t know how we did it…

Anyway, we were just pulling up to our apartment, when we were stopped by the police right across the road from where we lived. We had to take off the bandannas to convince the cops about whatever they wanted to be convinced about. After answering a few questions, when we explained that we lived in the apartments across the road and had driven all day on the bike, the police let us go.

I probably don’t need to mention that it was quite difficult to sit down for the next couple of days, and least of all ,the  fun we had at our office to answer the questions about our sunburn. We looked really awful with the skin on our faces flaking & cracking up due to the sun & wind burn! No way would we forget the helmets on a bike trip ever again!

After this bike trip, we realized that with a little preparation, we could have some amazing rides in the future. That realization, fortunately or unfortunately, is still sometimes overshadowed by sentiments like “live fast, die young”, “full rash”, “so what?” and “screw it, lets do it”.