2013's First Inter-State Ride (Goa-Amboli-Kolhapur-Belgaum-Goa)

Forrest Gump, the movie has a strange allure. For everybody who has seen it, the next paragraph is going to sound very familiar. For those who haven’t, familiarize yourselves with this piece and then watch the movie. It is great. 

  

That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.

Why am I raving about a 1994 movie on a motorcycle touring blog? It is because I felt the exact same way on our Chai Pakora run in the days preceding the India Bike Week.

The Chai Pakora run was organized in many cities including Goa as a build-up to the India Bike Week. And GEARS being as big as it is in Goa, was associated with IBW right from the start. The usual information went up on the Facebook page, the ride was to be upto Amboli Ghat. We would ride upto the summit, partake of the promised Chai and Pakoras and ride back to Goa. We were all excited and looking forward to the ride. So the day dawned, and we met up at the Mandovi bridge on 6th January at 6:00 am. A group of Royal Enfield riders and a bunch of Gearheads assembled on the chilly and foggy morning near the KTC bus-stand at Panaji, got introduced and began the ride.

The road leading to Amboli goes through relatively straight stretches through Goa, and upto the border. On a relaxed and cool morning this was really refreshing. We warmed up, and so did our bikes. We slowly began leaning in by degrees on gentle and long sweeping corners. That is a very Goan way to ride. Early morning, we take it easy. Half of us are half awake, some of us are hungover and the rest need the chai before they completely wake up.

But, here is the thing, a sleepy biker wakes up real quick in response to two stimuli. One, a Ghat with scant traffic and the second, as I said before- chai. Since chai was one steep hill climb away, the beginning of the ghat would wake us all up adequately. But before that, we had a brief stop at Sawantwadi. Since the chill was considerable, most of us needed to thaw our numb fingers and some needed to void full bladders. During the wait we were met up with the second batch of Gears riders who had started late mainly because they had bikes which made sure they caught up with us. Once they got there and lined up, we got our photos and were off.

Then on the frenzy took us. We were surrounded by resounding thumps from about fifteen Enfields, the jet like whines of ninjas and the staccato bursts from the KTMs. So when we sighted a corner, we took it. We cornered with all we had, our abilities, our bikes abilities and the inner (over)confidence that all of us have, which says- If Rossi can, I can too. And as we all know it turns out quite different than Rossi’s riding. Our front ends slide, back wheels slide, and more often than not we go wide. Pretty soon the realization dawns that a public road is not meant for all this and we settle for a decent pace and just enough lean angles to keep us happy.

Soon, the road to Amboli got treacherous. We thought that the potholes and roadbreaks would last just a short stretch. We were mistaken, very badly mistaken. By the time we got up to Amboli village, the cornering junkies were frustrated as the gravel and mid corner craters played spoilsport. The guys who craved straights were even more depressed as the few short straights that were available were in no better shape. So, as we approached the designated end of the ride, quite a few of us were fed up. And it was just 9:30.

At this stop, In true GEARS style, as soon as the road opened up and the tarmac smoothened a little, a certain yellow R15 and its rider Amey were suddenly overcome with a need to hold the throttle fully open for the next ten minutes. This resulted in an amazing flyby by the said rider, while we watched in amazement. Some of us tried to stop him by waving our hands about and getting as close to the road as possible, but to no avail. After overshooting the point by a good 5kms, Amey came back to the restaurant. When asked about his disregard to our efforts to make him stop, he said he thought we were villagers trying to peddle stuff. Well, that was a plausible explanation, but the question remains as to which villager would be clad in an alpinestars jacket and an avg helmet to sell his produce?

Once all the riders had gathered and Amey had joined us, we did have our Chai and Pakoras and a lot of other stuff. General banter and biker talk could be heard everywhere, when suddenly somebody at our table mentioned that Kolhapur was not far away and by extension the nearest McDonalds wasn’t very far away. As mouths drooled and images of burgers and fries floated around, a couple of guys said “let us do it” the number of guys ready for this slowly increased to about ten. So it was settled. We would have lunch at McDonalds Kolhapur.

A lot of phone calls followed. They usually went like this- “Sure dad, no way, not above 55 I promise…” or “I Know darling, we had plans, I will make it up to you in ways you cannot imagine…” or “They say that the road will be blocked for a while, it will be evening by the time it clears up…” and the best “Yeah, yeah one session of the extra classes just got over, it’s the break now, but they have classes all the way till evening, I may get late….”. So after all this a bunch of about ten guys set forth to Kolhapur.

The road hereon was not any better. It got worse and remained like that till we reached the Belgaum- Kolhapur highway. This stretch was really horrible and it was more off-roading than anything else. We cursed the government, the road builders and our stars for having picked this route. We spent almost all our time standing on the footpegs as our suspensions worked overtime. Once we hit the highway though, it was glorious. The roads were baby butt smooth and traffic scant. We made full use of it and made it to Kolhapur in time for lunch.

We were quite a scene as we entered, road warriors all tanned and covered in grime. We somehow felt superior to everybody who was dressed in conventional clothing. As we ordered, we noticed that all the counters were catering to us only, our hunger was apparently proportional to the distance we had travelled to get there. So we ate voraciously and without a break till we were bloated and lying about like drunks. After a brief rest, we got back on our bikes and rode non-stop to Belgaum. The road was great and we were loving every bit of it. Just before Belgaum, Rohan did an Amey and overshot the exit by a few kilometers, we had by now learnt to accept this as a custom at every turn off and philosophically waited till the exuberant rider was spent and returned in search of the rest of the party.

We had decided to return via Anmod as the Amboli route was really bad. This meant entering Belgaum city. It was crazy there. We got lost in the heavy traffic and spent quite some time grouping and breaking up. But finally we figured a way out and stuck to it. We had a brief stop before we left Belgaum to rehydrate and relax before the descent. We were blissfully unaware of the road conditions ahead. And it was good we were, coz if somebody had warned us, half of us would have decided to settle down in Belgaum for the rest of our lives.

The road between Belgaum and the Goa border was the worst I had ever ridden on. No part was free of potholes. And if you did find a good stretch, by the time one got to 70 kph, the road just ended in a unexpected two foot drop. This transition was so abrupt that even before we could think of braking we were into the drop and would hit the bottom with a sickening crunch. This particular problem made three riders damage parts on their bikes, which thankfully weren’t bad enough to break the bikes down. As usual we spent all the time standing up and our knees took a severe beating. And then suddenly we reached the Goa border.

Now, this was something else. We were like a bunch of long term prisoners suddenly allowed a one-way pass to a singles bar with only hot women inside. And we fell upon that road like wolves. We were starved of good roads for so long that we almost stopped and kissed the road. Now on, the going was smooth and fast. We cornered like maniacs and in general had loads of fun. Without a doubt, this was the best bit. We realized this after the strawberry run too. The last bit is always the most exciting.

We met up at the end of the Ghat- Molem, to discuss our antics on the road. Some of us were happy to be alive to tell the tale as we had gotten ourselves into quite a few hairy situations. It was a day well spent. All was well in the end and we were happy. That was what mattered. It was quite late by the time we set off from Molem. It was getting dark and we had to get back home in time to be yelled at by people who were awaiting our return. So we did.

This brings me back to Forrest Gump. In the end he says: I have run for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours. I'm pretty tired... I think I'll go home now.

Something like that went through my mind too. I had ridden for 525 kms. More than 90% of it on roads that felt like they were laid using the arse end of tarmac technology. I had ridden for almost 10 hours and that too for the first time in my life. I was pretty tired, I too would go home now.

Words by Dr. Ashwin Mysore