Out Of The Wild

Day 13 : Trip 1745 km

Shimla - Narkanda -Dharampur - Panipat

As decided last evening, we all had one healthy breakfast at the hotel, tipped the helpful waiter and got invites to the hotel again for the snow season. Jill was reeling under a hangover and he promptly went back to sleep after his breakfast. We all waited for the laundry to arrive since it was only then that we'd be able to pack up. The laundry arrived at 1130 hrs and we promptly packed up. Jill also got up groggily and set up his bike. When it was time to move downstairs, I found my rear tyre was flat - again. It was acting up again. I immediately set up the foot pump and inflated the tyre to 30 psi and I thought I would have to keep on checking the tyre pressure and regularly inflate the tyre. But thankfully and surprisingly I didn't have to. The tyre retained its pressure throughout the ride till Panipat. Strange, very strange. At the hotel parking lot, this kid comes with his grandad towards our bikes and starts admiring us. The kid's grandad was impressed when we told him of our trip itinerary and after a few minutes of conversation they bade goodbye to us. Even the hotel receptionist appreciated our zest for bike rides and told us that it really takes something out of the ordinary to be able to tolerate such long and hard rides.

1230 hrs and we were all set to leave the hotel . Anshu took his own sweet time getting his Electra started and it was only after he got it started that it was green signal for us to go, as it was for the entire trip! It started drizzling some half an hour later, barely out of Shimla. It was tolerable for a while, but then the rain got wilder and we had to stop and get our rain suits out. It remained that way throughout the trip. We passed the familiar Narkanda chowk ( we had been there earlier on our Chail trip) and ripped on the now better highway. But the rains after that made us slow down and the traffic started getting worse. One particular white sonata embera was being driven rash and posed a hazard to the riders until we let it pass by, and even then it narrowly missed getting hit head-on by a jeep from the opposite direction. Morons! When will people learn to drive sensibly on wet roads and that too in the hills?

Somehow, inexplicably, no one's rain suit was working perfectly and all of us were getting drenched. I was particularly wet to the skin. We had intended to stop at Dharampur for lunch at the same place we had breakfast in our Chail trip. By the time we reached the place at 1600 hrs, the rains were showing no signs of abating. I was thinking that once we moved out from the heights of Shimla and adjacent hills, the rains would stop. But there was to be none of that. While we tried to dry our wet clothes as much as possible, Jill,I and Vikram made some buys of pickles, jam and wine. Somehow, we managed to cram all that into our already overstuffed bags and rucksacks. I was particularly concerned about the wine bottles in my tight backpack but fortunately they made it all the way to my place safe and sound.

I had wanted one particular shot of us with the "trip" tshirts and finally it got realised at the restaurant at Dharampur. Everyone ordered paranthas while I settled for some fried rice. Anshu tried some exotic sounding lemon chicken, which turned out to be actually nice. The rains lashing outside didn't seem like stopping and we decided that we'd better ride in the rains itself, or else we'd be quite late reaching Panipat. So we rode out in the rains again for what seemed on long long ride, made all the more difficult by the relentless shower. It seemed the heavens were really pouring down on us.

Town after town we moved on, covered distances , traffic jams, wild and mad drivers at Zirakpur and fast cars and buses on NH1, but still the rains showed no signs of slowing down. It was a wet wet wet ride alright. We covered the distances in a line, Kenny up front and the rest following him like kids following a dad, all the while drawing attention from passing cars, trucks and buses alike. Fortunately none of us had any issues with our faithful bikes and my rear tyre was also running ok. We stopped somewhere near Ambala for a hot cup of tea when it got just too tiring to ride on in the rain.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived at the "pepsi pool", a turn from the NH1 towards the Panipat refinery township. Vikram wanted to carry on and make it to Gurgaon the same night itself. Inspite of trying to deter him at our tea break itself, the big man wouldn't budge and he roared on NH1 towards Delhi, only after making him promise that he'd intimate us on reaching his home safely. We took the road leading to Gyan's place after one police patrol interrogated Gyan about our bikes, our motives, ourselves! But just 2 km before the refinery , Gyan had a blow out of his front tyre at a couple of particularly nasty bumps on the road. There was no option but to limp home and get it repaired the next morning. We arrived at Gyan's place at 2300 hrs, completely bushwhacked and tired to the bone. Anshu was so tired he was not even ready to unstrap all his luggage from his bike. With a little help from Kenny, Gyan and me, he had all his stuff inside Gyan's apartment in a while. We had been riding 11 hours straight in the rain!!

Fortunately there was a little rum from the trip and a little whisky at Gyan's place that helped us soothe aching muscles. We had some cup noodles from the trip and we used the very kerosene stove used for the campsites to boil water and make the noodles. Dinner consisted of rice and some chicken curry made from the ready-to-eat packs we had taken for the camping sites. Whisky/rum accompaniment was the pickle I had picked up from Dharampur. People were relatively quick to have their dinner and I didn't wait for anyone to go to Gyan's bedroom and snuggle into a much needed sleep. Gyan had his office next morning and he had dozed off right where we were having the whisky/rum.