The Motorcycle and the Mountains: Chennai to Ladakh and Everything in Between

The whole idea of owning an automobile originated somewhere in November, 2015. If it was ever going to be a motorcycle, it would have to be a Royal Enfield - those machines with the thump and the machismo. Point to be noted here is that I did not know how to ride properly back then. "But motorcycles are not safe" my father told me. "Besides, will you take us around on a motorcycle when we visit you?" added my mother. Buying a car made a lot of sense. And then there was my then love interest. Let's call her ABC and protect her identity here. I asked ABC as well for her opinion and even though there was nothing conclusive, ever hopeful that something will work out, I finally decided to buy a car. A few test drives and new car launches later, I had booked a vehicle for delivery in the next week. I was in the office when a colleague congratulated me on hearing about the booking and asked me, "so have you decided to settle here?" I was taken aback thinking if I had really "settled". The dealer called me the next day saying the car could only be delivered after 2 months of waiting time. That was the final nail in the coffin. Parents had already visited, took them around in Uber and things were not quite looking up with ABC. At this point now, it only mattered what I wanted to do. So I cancelled the car booking, and a booking for a black Royal Enfield Classic 350 was made.

From one of my first late night ride in the city. Chennai. April, 2016

Cut to April 2016, the motorcycle is ready for delivery but I am not. I cannot see myself driving it in the traffic. I call Lakshay and tell him it's ready for delivery. He comes with me to take the delivery and drive it home. Intimidated first by the sheer weight of this machine, I take some time to practice, start driving around on the roads, roam the streets at night, take it for spins on the open East Coast Road and within no time the romance has begun. I call it Mr Tambourine Man but ABC gifts me this leather belt key chain that has the word "Maverick" engraved on it so to honour that, from that day, Mr Tambourine Man was aka Maverick.

To think of it, I actually took to Maverick as that was also my alias for all gaming purposes, inspired obviously from Top Gun. How the name occurred to ABC has always been lost on me.

Riding with the Royal Mavericks, New Delhi.
January, 2017

By late 2016, I had made friends with a couple of other bullet owners and the conversation about a Ladakh ride had begun. And then it was time to move to New Delhi. Closer to the Himalayas? Sure, I will move and take my motorcycle along. I joined the Delhi Royal Mavericks club and in pretty much every conversation Ladakh came up at least once. Now I had heard so much about Ladakh from my father and I had a motorcycle that is made for a ride in that terrain so I was dead sure to make this happen at some point. 

February 2019 is when 20 months of non-stop travel ceased for me and I started having withdrawals. After all this time with the high-paced life, when I actually get the time to look back, I realised I had to forego a lot of things and I wanted to do something meaningful. I looked up my options and pre-booked a slot on a Ladakh Motorcycle Exepdition for June 1st.

It was somewhere around mid-May when my tour organiser called to inform me that 18 out of the 20 who were supposed to go had pulled out. A pause followed and I thought the tour would be cancelled, but to my surprise, I was told the tour would still go on with me, the other guy and the leader they would have appointed for the ride. So there were three motorcycles now but no backup vehicle. To be honest, this is how I had wanted to do it instead of going in a group of 20 so I had nothing to complain about. 

I met Ronald, Salman and Parismita on day 1 of the ride. Ronald, who would later be known as Sir Ronald, was a Goan who had come down from Doha. Salman had been to Ladakh 43 times in the past 9 years, Parismita was pillion with Salman and taking care of the logistics on this trip for the company. I had my orientation the previous day - basically about all the bad things that happen to riders - either when they are unruly or the nature is. To name a few mishaps - hands freezing and not being able to pull the clutch, falling off and hanging by cliffs because you were not patient and tried to overtake that truck from the left, getting washed away due to the current at water crossings etc. On day 1, however, in the sweltering north Indian heat at about 46 degrees Celsius, "cold" problems seemed very far-fetched. Ludhiana was our first stop.

Starting from Qutub Minar for the Ladakh Expedition.
New Delhi. June, 2019

I would not want to go rambling on about each day. It was a 14-days expedition and gave me enough time on the road for thoughts worth content for a book. I mean this piece of writing to be more about my relationship with the motorcycle, the adversities and the shift in perspectives that a trip to the mountains brings with it.

Not like any day was easier than the rest, but it was the ride from Patnitop to Srinagar when the magnitude of the challenge ahead of us "hit" me. The roads were absolutely bad in Jammu and the traffic was crazy. I had this tempo honking from behind and I gave him a pass to overtake. It was carrying some tent equipment with a tarpaulin roll hanging. Before I knew it, the tarpaulin roll unfastened and came flying and hit me in my face. I got dislodged from the bike, fell head first and then on my butt. In what seemed like 5 minutes at that time, some shock and confusion ensued. I opened my eyes to see Salman attending to my bike, my worst fear was a possible injury to my leg and I moved it and it seemed fine, thanks to the gear. So I got up and asked Salman if the bike was fine. He said it was good to go and so I said "let's go" like nothing had happened. They asked me how I was doing, I said that I was fine. And then I ask Parismita if I had an accident and I fell. I also looked at my shoes and said that I didn't remember wearing them. This scared the three of them till I started regaining sense of what was happening. I could feel some pain in my butt but nothing that would prevent me from riding the motorcycle. After I regained memory and these guys were assured, we started out again. On the same day later on, we braved some hailstorm on the way and I realised that my front wheel rim was bent and the handle was wobbly as a result. Due to all that craziness and the traffic, we reached Srinagar later than anticipated and I could not get the wheel fixed.

On the way to Kargil from Srinagar, before Zoji La. June, 2019

Next day was supposed to be the start of our ascent into the mountains. Zoji La was the first mountain pass that we would face. I looked it up the previous night on Google. With a bent wheel and a hurting butt and legs, I was not very sure how I was going to do it but it was not worth backing out. The morning it started drizzling in Srinagar. One would ideally wait for the sun to come out but we had to cross the Zoji La Pass as they might have closed it for vehicles if it rained and there was a landslide. So we started ascending. The visor was getting foggy and the roads underneath had turned to mere gravel and it was slippery because of the water flowing down. There was mud to traverse and for me especially, a wobbly handle to manage on legs that would hurt when the bike went off balance and the legs had to take on the weight of the motorcycle. In all of this, I lost my patience and revved up the motorcycle only to skid a little and pull the brakes just in time when I am about a feet away from the cliff. I opened the fogged visor for better visibility, saw how stupid I just had been and then took it from there - a bit slower from here on. In the distance somewhere were the other two - struggling just like me.

Maverick at the Zoji La Pass.
Zoji La. June, 2019

We go through all of this and reach the ZoJi La where we stopped over under a shade for tea and gathered around fire for heat. It hadn't stopped raining so we decided to make a quick exit except some water had now seeped into my gloves. And here comes the first snowfall I have ever seen! On my motorcycle, snow falling with all the white glaciers around - it would have been a pretty picture if the hands weren't freezing. I felt all the movement from my hands disappearing, almost becoming brittle. But there was no point stopping. I decided to ride till the check post which was about 20 km down. I reached there and took my gloves out to see my hands almost blue - I thought a frost bite had happened. I kicked the check post door open and put my hands near the fire, praying it would come back to life. The heat worked and I managed to get my hands working. We then drove from there to Kargil via Dras - one of the most beautiful stretches with great roads on the trip.

At the mighty Khardung La. June, 2019

Kargil to Leh the next day was a very peaceful ride compared to what had been happening on the expedition so far. Nice winding roads, sun shining, picturesque terrain that shifted every 15-20 odd km. I felt like I was 6 years old and listening to my father describing Ladakh from his time as I rode through that beautiful terrain. We reached Leh and spent a day there acclimatizing. Also in Leh I got my wheel repaired but worse was yet to come. We had to go to Nubra valley via Khardung La. Now, I had seen pictures of people posing at Khardung La - one of the highest motorable roads in the world, so I was not very concerned, especially after having taken on the Zoji La. However, snow had started falling in South Pullu itself - about 20 km from Khardung La. What it meant was when we reached the top, a horde of motorcycles and cars were queued up because there was ice on the road which made it extremely slippery for vehicles to drive and the army asked people to wait till they cleared it out. I saw motorcycles here not just skidding but spinning and crashing, seasoned riders crying and giving up finding ways to return. It was not just how difficult driving was but also the challenge of the altitude that does things to your will and grit. To spare all the dangerous details of what ensued, let me just say that it is advised to not stay for more than 15 minutes at that altitude, and I ended up spending an hour on that fateful day. We rode down to Nubra despite all of that and met a sandstorm on the way. I was not looking forward to coming back again to Khardung La the next day but it turned out to be much easier - perhaps because we had seen it already and were prepared for what it could look like.

In the next couple of days, we went around to visit the Pangong Lake - a landscape so surreal it had me in tears and led to a catharsis. I thought about all that I had endured on this trip, all the conversations, and the people that led me to this and was just thankful for having made it there. I thought about how it took more than just driving skills - perhaps luck or some sort of protection from above that kept me in one piece to be able to witness that spectacle before my eyes. The locus of control which had always been internal had shifted slightly outward.

Motorcycles covered in snow in Kargil.
Kargil, June, 2019.

The original plan that had been to come down to Delhi via Manali had to change. The Rohtang Pass was still not open due to snowing and we decided to come back via the same Kashmir route. Familiarity breeds comfort and I thought it would be easy but mother Nature had other plans. On the Leh to Kargil highway, we met another bout of snowfall and landslides which made it the worst riding day on the trip. With your hands and feet freezing and snow on your eyelids, with the rocks falling, there is very little you can do. At one point, I had to stop my motorcycle and ask an approaching Innova to help me unzip my jacket for me to be able to put my hands in my chest and get some body heat, amidst the falling snow. I then put my hand on the bike silencer for warmth but the silencer also was running cold. In all of that, there was no other option but to just ride to Kargil and find shelter in the hotel. All the gear was wet, and we heard there was 3 ft of snow in Dras which would keep the road closed for another 2 days. That was the end of the expedition. I made arrangements to reach Leh again next day and took a flight back, leaving my bike behind in Kargil, with the assurance from the organiser of a safe delivery of my bike back to Chennai.

I got my bike back only towards the end of July and that's when the trip actually ended for me. The motorcycle had returned with some dents and repair work to be done - and so had I. For about two and a half weeks back into the city life, I had a tough time adjusting to routine. Nightmares of glaciers trying to devour me and waking up to feeling cold because I had known that feeling of having been chilled to the bones. I attended workshops on leadership and decision-making at work, all the time thinking at the back of my mind of those decisions that would have made the difference between life and death or at least would have come at the cost of a limb. I remember having continued walking through the rain while others stopped under the shade, in the first couple of weeks since coming back. Why? Because it was only water and I knew I would be home in 15 min so there was nothing to worry about - not like my hands were freezing and the spirit crushed because I did not know if I would be making it back or not.

So that is the story of my motorcycle and me so far. What keeps you alive?  

Incomplete Stories

In the second last year of my school life, I worked on coming up with my own humble novel. It was around the same time that I started this blog. A little appreciation for my writing worked wonders and I was very encouraged to work on a plot. I developed characters from my observations of people on the train to and from Mumbai. It all went well for about a month and a half until I reached a deadlock where it was too complicated to proceed. I don't know if that happens to a lot of people, but I was frustrated and I deleted the MS word file that contained the story. I think that is perhaps the reason why professional writers use a typewriter. No matter how frustrated you are, the volume of your effort is always visible and so you never want to destroy and waste it.

After that failure, I have not had the motivation to attempt another novel and as the frequency of the posts on my blog would show, haven't been into writing much. I shifted to academic writing for a while, wrote a few short stories here and there, continued my "poets and pancakes" debate with those who could write poetry, never conceding that prose was for the less creative people, and mostly reading other people's works. Now that my time allows me to turn my thoughts into words, I feel like writing again and keep the scope open for both - academic as well as creative writing (if this is what this freestyle of writing could be called). In my experience so far, I have found academic writing to be much easier than the creative form. With a little training and experience, analysing data and forming hypotheses is a lot easier than designing characters and their environment. Most of all, academic writing allows you to be objective about the data, whereas you cannot be objective about a character that you create in a story. 

Coming back to the point of this post, as I looked through the dashboard of my blog, I found a good number of drafts that I could never finish. I admit to having a weakness in terms of writing conclusions. I never know how to end things - in writing as in life. However, on reflection, I have found that I focus more on the characters than the plot. Once I have a fair idea of the character and I begin to like them, it becomes very painful for me to see them in a mediocre plot. And controlling the plot is not very easy unless you are thinking of something really bizarre and you want to confuse those who chance upon reading the thing. So I eventually have to give up the story and that's how they remain incomplete. I find it kind of hypocritical that we let our stories in real life fade with time without conclusions but are hesitant to accept a piece of writing without a proper conclusion. To think about it that way, I feel that it ultimately boils down to what Alvy Singer, Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall, says towards the end, "You’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it’s real difficult in life." I guess that's the way we work. 

Chennai So Far

Most of the travelogues on Chennai start with a description of how horrible the weather is. Irony of the situation is that I am pointing it out too, so that leaves me no different than others who have written about this city. They say Chennai is a city, Madras is an emotion. It's been over a year but I am still not so well acquainted with either that emotion or the city so I will go with Chennai.

Aerial View of Chennai. PC: Google

In my experience of about about a year and a quarter, however, Chennai has turned out to be nothing like they told me when I decided to move and pursue my PGDM here. I was warned about everything being different here: the people, the language, the food, the music, the weather (the starting point for virtually every article on the city). None of them seemed legit even before I came here. Why? My best friends in Baroda were south Indians, and I have loved masala dosa more and longer than I have loved any person. I don't hate what I don't understand so that made me pretty much indifferent to the music here. The weather indeed is a bit of a problem in the months of April and May, but God bless the 21st century, we have air conditioners! And contrary to the popular belief, you can manage to get around in the city with English and Hindi; Tamil has not been a necessity. So all the people telling me that the city would be hostile has proven ridiculous. Like any other city, this one comes with its own set of flaws: auto rickshaws that charge you meter "plus" Rs 10-30 depending on the driver's mood and your level of desperation, a name for each nook and cranny to confuse the hell out of you, road blocks because the celebration demands that the stage be set up in the middle of the road, vadas and only vadas for street food, etc. All said and done, I think Chennai has grown on me. 

Unlike the Marine Drive or the Bandra bandstand in Mumbai, Chennai offers you the Marina and Elliot's beaches where you can sit on the beach without the traffic snarls from behind. Marina has a serious cleanliness issue but Elliot's is a good option for those who like the sea. I am not a "let's go to the mall" person but Express Avenue and Phoenix I guess would make up for a good sight for those who are. Movie tickets are sold for Rs 120 perennially. That perhaps is the reason why it's so difficult to get one but when you get it you are a happy man. I have not been able to bring myself to liking the tea that we get on the road side tea stalls but I am a big time fan of the filter kaapi. Perhaps the best thing about the city for me has been finding joints that sell dosas in just about every corner of the city. Unlike a lot of people who come from the Northern states, I have liked the south Indian food. For those who couldn't, there are plenty of other options available. The people here are as ridiculous and as nice as anywhere else in the country where I have lived. The transportation and conveyance is convenient if you are lucky not to bump into that one auto driver who is having a bad day. Chennai basically gives you all the comforts and opportunities of a metro without the pace of a metro city. The people here are not always rushing, the kind you see in a Mumbai or a New Delhi or even Kolkata for that matter.

I have had complaints about the city in terms of lack of places to eat and hang out for students, the language has also been an issue in talking to people at times but my overall experience with the city has been just fine. Chennai, if nothing else, has reinforced my belief that everyone has a story to tell but to know a place you have to experience it on your own, and  I plan to explore more of both - Chennai and Madras. Until next time!

The Castaway Nomad

...On the morning of February 5th, I found myself on a whole new island. You tend to become indifferent to places when you move a lot, see a lot, observe a lot. This, however, was not a destination I had picked, and I could feel a sense of, for the lack of a better word, trouble. Once a nomad, always a nomad, I began my exploration of the new island only to find that this one was as deserted as the deserts that I had been travelling in. To be honest, I was comforted by the presence of this pattern initially. However, problems have begun to surface lately. To have a clearer understanding of the trouble, I suppose it would be good if I gave a brief account of how things were before I arrived here and also as to how I got here. 

Before the boat wreck brought me here I was travelling in the deserts of the mainland. You develop a certain kind of connection between you and your surrounding when both have something in common. I was never a believer of time and I could feel the same about the sands around me. And so I travelled far and wide, without any sense of urgency until I met a tribe of people who told me about this vast body of water called the ocean. It was water, after all, that got me moving in the first place. I found myself giving in to the temptation of exploring this vast body of water and decided to head in the direction of the ocean, picking up things along the way that would come in handy for this new experience. What the tribesmen forgot to tell me about was the dangers that came with the ocean. So on a bright sunny day when the water seemed calm, I set out to sail. The water seemed as timeless as the sand and again I travelled wide into the ocean, far from the mainland. And then the last thing I remember, I was caught up in a storm that had me struggling for days before my boat gave in to the wrath of the ocean and I was swept ashore here.

Perhaps nobody knows better than a nomad that there comes a time when the place you seek shelter in runs out of resources that sustain your existence and that is the place's way of telling you to look for a new haven. This brings me to the trouble that I mentioned. The main challenge that an island poses is not survival but the resistance against the craving for mainland. If you look at it that way, there are hardly any modes of escape, unless you are a trained seafarer and you know how to make rafts and boats. I, however, am a seasoned nomad of the mainland and I can't think of an escape route through the ocean that surrounds this island. That is my trouble. I climb the highest cliff on this island everyday to look for an approaching ship. I scream at the top of my voice from the cliff in order to hear my voice echo through the hills and make believe that I am not the only one here. To be fair, that has been the only thing that has helped me after the island started showing signs of denunciation towards me. The adversity I am sure has shaped my ideas better than my journeys through the deserts on the mainland but I believe my time to move to a new place has come, if only my destiny allows me to get out of here alive...

A wanderer of deserts, farer of the sea

Craves to embark on a new journey 

If all they say about hope is true

Where is his ship and where is the crew?

Blog! What?

A new found interest in the libertarian philosophy saw me creating another blog enthusiastically titled, "The Liberty Mill". With "The Liberty Mill" I tried putting down an amateur account of whatever I had read (and continue to read), and share it with people because that is something that I felt was needed to be shared and promoted. Now, for the promotion purpose, I created a facebook page for the blog. Problem? Well, I do have a good circle of friends and tend to make a lasting impression on people I meet but I would not really describe myself as a people's person. When it came to sending out the invites, I found it too embarrassing to ask people to 'like' the page when all that my blog had was probably one article that I had written as an introduction to the blog. However, I did send out a few invites to close friends asking them to 'like' the page and stay updated on the blog. I also shared the link to my blog on my facebook timeline for anyone else who might be interested.

Three months into the creation of the blog, I find it with just three posts (one each for every month). While this is no desperate call, it has been rather disappointing for me not to have been able to find the mantra to keep people coming to visit my blog. As a result, I could never keep up the enthusiasm alive. I have invited suggestions from friends who run comparatively more successful blogs and websites and I have been asked to make it 'fun'. Again, I do not see the point in posting plagiarized fun pictures or jokes on my blog when the sole purpose of the blog is to promote the idea and the philosophy of liberty through what I am apparently good at - writing. I have had the privilege to write and present research papers at conferences in different places. I'm not sure how many people read what I had written or if it was even worthy of being called a contribution to knowledge as we know it, but that has been a more satisfying experience for me than the story of my blogging experience.

Why am I posting all this on this blog? Because this thought process marks the return of the nomad! I would take a break from posting all the amateur content on "The Liberty Mill" and focus my attention on learning and academic writing till I get the knack to attract audiences for political literacy, if not by writing then by other means. Until then, for the adventure of it, hoping for a world without borders! :)

Hobby of the Masses: Music

"I live on music" would be quite of an over statement because it so happens in my case that I exist more because of food and water. But yes sir, I do follow music like anything. In a recent incident when people were being asked about their hobbies, 99.9% answered that their prime hobby was "listening to music". The person asking the question did not seem to be impressed with this "common" hobby; I could, to some extent, make out what was so disappointing about this answer.

A sad but true fact: people around us are inherently lazy. Most people are likely to be either busy or asleep. Being awake is being busy for most of the people, the rest of us struggle with finding what we know as "hobbies". Some people read, some do gardening, some collect stamps, some write, and the remaining (99.9%): we 'listen' to music. I would however like to distinguish myself from the average listener who won't be able to tell you what genre he likes. On being asked about the artist, he will show total ignorance. On being asked about the lyrics, he will show a lack of understanding. On being asked about what actually pleases him about a certain kind of music, he will tell you it's the tempo or the beats without knowing precisely what it means.

I am, on the other hand, a bit more categorical about music. I listen to whatever pleases me and at the same time ensure that I am aware of the details I talked about just now. A friend of mine recently told me that I had a song for every occassion. Quite pestering my voice could be but I did realize after it was brought to my notice that in every conversation I found one song that would apply to the situation. So, I sing till I am tolerated, sometimes joined by others, sometimes stoned by others. 

So what was the whole purpose of writing all this? Let's see, although it may sound a little stupid but music has proved to have a healing touch. It must be taken in, imbibed into the soul. Music must be "listened to" and not "heard of". Music is an expression of a thought, it should be understood like a piece of conversation, like a book read well. If such is the approach to music, I think it well deserves to be called a hobby.    

Maturing With Mumbai

I had the pleasure of being in Mumbai last Sunday after almost a year. Leaving the city at night as I boarded the train back to Vadodara, I had a flashback of the first memories of the city. My first trip to Mumbai was in April 2004 when my sister and I accompanied my father to Mumbai. Living in the northern part of the country, Mumbai had always seemed to fascinate me. So, as the milestones on the road started reading 50,40,30 km and so on, that city popped out of nowhere, and from the car window I saw those huge towering structures, the ones we see in "big" cities. There were luxurious cars on the road, quite fashionable people, youngsters with their girlfriends on their bikes - a scene too fascinating for a boy aged 12 from a city in the so-called North. I went to Mumbai on a few more occasions in the next year, again accompanied by my father. This time I looked to get a glimpse of a film star, not sure if it was really him, but I guess I saw Ritesh Deshmukh somewhere. 

In the year 2006 when the flood hit Mumbai, I happened to be in Panvel for a school camp. As we travelled from Panvel to Mumbai Central in a BEST bus, I had a glimpse of what is called Resilient Mumbai. It was quite an experience to see how the people of a city who remain indifferent even to their neighbours had come out to help when time had called for it. My first visit to South Mumbai happened to come much later in January 2008. It was the day of the Mumbai Marathon and traffic was not allowed on the road, so we walked from CST and reached Marine Drive, sat there for a while, I found the city less crowded for once.

2009-10 was the period when I figured out the city much by myself. I had to make excursions to the city almost after every fortnight in order to take mock tests. Until now I had always come by road, so I did not have any idea about how the transport in the city worked. On one or two occasions I hired a cab or auto rickshaw, and then it was my turn to experience the city's lifeline - the local trains. The more I travelled on my own, the more places I figured out, the more people I met, the better feeler I got. 

Sitting on the Marine Drive under a moonlit sky at 10 PM last Sunday, I realized I now knew the city better. Seeing celebrities or the lustre of the city was no longer important. Fascinations had drowned but the charm of the city remained intact. I could feel that in a subtle way, the city had emboldened me, taught me what reality meant, gave me ambition, and slowly but steadily, imparted a little of what I call wisdom.