Into The Wild

A road trip to Jaipur, a weekend ride to Chail and numerous short trips weren't enough to satiate the need in us to get away from it all, to lose ourselves from the vagaries of our mundane lives. And we patiently waited for our annual getaway, and among the destinations debated, we zeroed in on Lahaul and Spiti Valley....one of the most talked about, and also one of the most torturous, circuits among riders. After fiddling with the dates, and numerous mails later, we decided we'd start off on September 5th : "we" being Kenny, Jawed a.k.a. Jill, Gyan, Himanshu a.k.a. Nawab, Anshuman,Vikram a.k.a. Kamikaze and yours truly as the sure shot trippers. We filed for leaves at our respective offices and most of us confirmed the sanctioned leaves, save one guy - the Royal Ass Nawab!! That guy is one proper screw up this time. Last time he was one of the most enthusiastic and we were left wondering what he was up to this time. Members of the last trip wondered if "Nawab koi galat kaam nahin toh kar raha hai?"!!!

Anyway, Gyan and I started booking our IOCL Holiday Homes in Manali and Shimla and we had confirmed bookings in a few days. We mailed the confirmation intimations on the mailers and had approving nods from the members.

Some days later into the preparations, Nawab suddenly calls me up and says he didn't know we were leaving on the September 5th. Bloody hell I cried, it was almost a month after the bookings and now this fella was asking us to postpone by one day. All of us abused Nawab no end, but being the shameless fellow he was/is , our profanities mattered little to him and requested us to change the booking dates. Mad as hell we were , but for the sake of our compatriot Gyan and I cancelled our bookings and re-booked for different dates simultaneously, wasted 4 precious cheque leaves and got confirmations yet again after a few days. We all asked him if he was ok with the new dates, to which he happily replied yes. He was warned that there would be no more cancellations/rescheduling whatsoever. Anshu and Jill even went to the extent of saying that it was totally unwarranted and that they didnt have any idea of the rescheduling at all. But anyway, Kenny and I calmed Jill down saying it was done for our darling Nawab.

Our trip preparations started with shopping for bike items at Karol Bagh, tent bookings, bike servicing et all, while Nawab remained in bliss in his favourite Gujjuland. Neither was he communicating with us, nor was he giving us any details of his leave status. Then, one week before the trip - BETRAYAL!! Nawab announced he wasn't joining us for the trip, citing reason as "Dil se awaaz nahin aa rahi hai"!!!!! We corrected him saying that the real reason he wasn't joining us cause he had grown too greedy marketing his ass over there. All vent up angst of our hassles of re-scheduling and taking care of Nawab's shopping needs went in hurling the choicest of "gaali"s on Nawab and we went on a silent mode with him from thereon. Kenny immediately removed his name from the mailing list and everyone complied, happily.

With Nawab out of the picture, we now concentrated on our final preps and I decided I'd quit office on 5th Sept itself and move on towards Delhi. Anshu and Jill got done with the final shopping , including toileteries worth 500 bucks by Anshu!! Essentially, my trip started on the 5th itself. The guys gathered at Jill's place on the 5th eve, barring Kamikaze who joined us early next morning, all geared up and raring to go. Incidently, 5th happened to be Jill's birthday and we had b'day celebrations over a bottle of Haig and chicken . Not a bad way to start off the trip!!