Screaming Ahead

25Th Oct 2008: A blue beast stood wrapped in plastic, waiting for its rider when I walked in looking for the the king chetah among the chetahs, it looked at me and I looked back. Taking my time I looked at it and inspected it as it stood in shadows. I looked around, there were others too, but this one was the one. I smiled and took of the wrappers. It had to be this one.

I took the delivery of the bike on 26th as Iron should not be brought home according the HinduCulture. As the bike was being cleaned before delivery, I gave dad the keys of the bike and asked him to take it out 

The run-in was a lengthy thing for me, I had already done run-in of two bikes in less than a year’s time and doing it for the third was making me impatient. But it had to be done. I kept the bike as a surprise to all, waiting for the 1,000KM run in clock to get over and what could be better than a ghat (twisties) section just after that. First time I opened the throttle to 7,000 RPMs as the tiny engine roared to life. The balance perfect, the brakes as of a chetah, this light bike made its way up, ahead of others. But the real performance test is yet to come, as Chinmay waits on his Pulsar 220 to see if this Chetah is faster than his panther. Only time will tell.

Riding the black YZF R15

So i got my third ride on the R15, the first two were not close to being called a test ride, but this time I had a good time on the bike.

The bike: Well if you have money to spend, then this is a bike to buy. Why did i tell that? Well because the price tag doesn’t justify the 17PS power of the bike. Even if you read the magazines, you would see that most of them compare the track performance of the bike but not over all.

The bike is designed like a sports bike and it feels like one too. But here is one more thing it feels like – Sports bike with no power. Its like

Shelly

:)

So you are going on a trip with bunch of riders and you are new to the group and suddenly someone says “we will use staggered formation”, what do you do. Reaction depends on people. But here is small info tip to tell you what what is. These formations have different advantages and disadvantages. So I am putting some light on what they are.

Staggered Formation

In this formation the bikes move in pair of two. The leader is on the right front, the follower to him/her is on the left and behind by few meters. The person following him is on the right and just behind the leader like in the picture shown. The advantage of this is that both the leader and the person following him/her has a good view of the road ahead. And the leader simultaneously has a view of two riders on its left-rear and the one just behind him. The riders in the middle can look at the rider in front, front -right, rear-left, rear depending on where he/she is.

Staggered formation

Trail Formation

Train formation is one in which the rider follow each other in line. Useful in tight roads and turns. Its important the people following maintain a good distance among each other. The disadvantage is the visibility. Rider in front can see few behind him, the ones in middle have limited visibility of traffic ahead.

Trail formation

Line formation

In this all bikes are in a line. This is good to make your presence felt but not good option to try.

Line

Leh Trip Log:

Day 01: 29th-May -2008 Jammu – Pathankot [Broken Bridge]
Day 02: 30th-May -2008 Pathankot – Manali
Day 03: 01st-June-2008 Manai
Day 04: 02nd-June-2008 Manali – Keylong [bike oil leak]
Day 05: 03rd-June-2008 Keylong – Sarchu [AMS]
Day 06: 04th-June-2008 Sarchu – Leh
Day 07: 05th-June-2008 Leh
Day 08: 06th-June-2008 Khardungla
Day 09: 07th-June-2008 Pangong Tso
Day 10: 08th-June-2008 Leh-Kargil
Day 11: 09th-June-2008 Kargil-Srinagar
Day 12: 10th-June-2008 Srinagar – Pathankot [Rains + water crossings]
Day 13: 11th-June-2008 Pathankot – Chandigarh
Day 14: 12th-June-2008 Chandigarh
Day 15: 13th-June-2008 Chandigarh – Delhi
Day 16: 14th-June-2008 Delhi – Noida

29th-May -2008 Jammu – Pathankot [Broken Bridge]

After reaching Amritsar we took a cab to Jammu in order to reach fast. With things deteriorating in Srinagar due to the Amarnath Shrine Land issue, our plans of taking the Srinagar route seemed to go down the drain. The only alternate was to do it via Manali.
After reaching Jammu around 01:00PM we took bath and lunch and decided to leave for Pathankot. My CBZ had some starting issue. It was nothing but some minor issue. I noticed that my bike’s leg gaurd had some wear and tear. It was that Sravanth’s bike had come off the stand and fallen on my bike. When the truck guys put it back in position, they didn’t notice that our leg gaurds were touching. And with jerks and all the leg gaurds had worn out each other.

We left for Pathankot around 03:00 PM and after withdrawing cash etc.. I think we left Jammu around 3:45- 4:00PM.

Sravanth was quick to pace out. We were ripping on the Jammu Pathankot road. I decided to stop for some water and then Hrishi noticed that his bungie came off. Luckily we had stopped for fuel else things could have gone bad for us.

After reaching Pathankot we wanted to cross it and ride one hour before stopping. But later on we came to know through someone that the bridge that we were going to take had collapsed. And since Hrishi didn’t want to ride at night, we decided to halt at Pathankot.

Day 02: 30th-May -2008 Pathankot – Manali

The fun ride. Pathank to Manali was fun ride. Good roads, low traffic and best of all hills. I made quite a few videos on the move. We also stopped at a river. It was off route but it was fun. Stopped and took some pics before we marched ahead.
The argument- I was feeling hungry after riding so much .. but Hrishi wanted to skip lunch. It was around 5:00PM and I started feeling hungry. I didn’t realise that when Hrishi said no riding in the dark he meant no riding 1 hour before it goes dark. For me dark would mean at least when you need to switch your lights on – sunset time at min. But for Hrishi it started even when sun was visible ahead. This roughed up things between us which later came up when we were looking for a Hotel. We stopped at Himachal tourism guest house, though the place had booking for the next day – which meant moving to a different hotel, Hrishi was adament about staying there despite himself making agree on the fact that they would not stay at anyplace which required changing rooms in the morning. I didn’t ask much, Hrishi had either an ego issue or he was dead tired.

Day 03: 01st-June-2008 Manali

Since we had to change the room, we spent half the next day shifting. Sravanth couldn’t do rafting and I could do para gliding which I wanted to. We did some shopping though.

Day 04: 02nd-June-2008 Manali – Keylong [bike oil leak]

Keylong and our first pass “Rohtang”. Hrishi and Sravanth took Dimox, high altitude sickness medicine. Doctors whom I had asked said it wasn’t required so I didn’t take it. We packed break fast from the resort and left for Keylong early morning around 6:00AM. Again me and Sravanth were quick to reach up. Taking pics and making videos on the way. Rohtang was a good place. I had taken only two bread slices and in the mean time Hrishi and Sravanth ate the whole pack 

The clouds were coming up and so we decided to move. If the clouds would come on the road then riding would be an issue. 2Kms from there we were riding down. There was a group of Israeli cyclists. They were riding like hell.. one of them overtook Hrishi on the way down.

The army convoy. I had seen convoys before, but convoys here were huge. 10 trucks – no, 20 – no, 30 – no.. these seemed like 50 (donno if that was the case). We were stopped by the MP (Military Police) to let the trucks pass first. After they crossed, we started. We had to overtake a whole 50 of those. I let Hrishi and Sravanth pass. Halfway through the convoy I saw Hrishi standing. His footpeg had come off. Again the trucks over took us. We started to ride and over take them. Then we saw Sravanth standing and taking pics. Now Again we had overtake them. THis was getting irritating. With virtually no road, the trucks were

To be continued…

4 Days of BN Meet

4 Days of freedom

4 Days of life worth remembering

486KM ride one way.

Dandeli, BN annual meet 2008 was one event to remember. 480 KMs of one day ride 

Dandeli was place for BN Annual meet. Riders from different parts of the country would meet at this place. Dandeli is a natural habitat for wildlife, its more of a jungle you can say. Located in Karnatka, this place is more like an isolated place with very few tourist.

Pune - Dandeli Route

Day 01: The ride day

We were supposed to meet atChandani Chowk at 05:30 AM and leave at 6:00 AM, but I couldn’t sleep properly whole night, anxiety I suppose. Finally I woke up at 04:00 AM, it was too early so I had corn flakes and slept again only to wake up at 5:00AM. I didn’t want to disturb my roommate so I quietly did all I could.

Finally I left at 05:30 AM and reached Chandani Chowk at 05:55AM only to find myself alone. I called up Chinamay to ask where he was only to know that all had assembled at a tapri and I was the second last person to reach , Abhishek Haldar (jolu warrior) was last. We left at 06:10 AM.

I knew that I was going to be slow so I took the responsibility to follow along with Sayan, a guy I could trust.

Soon chinmay and Somnath started ripping and were way ahead, jayraman was slow on his Pulsar 180 so was Harshad as his bike was new and had not completed its run in which meant that me and Sayan had to ride at same speeds as well.

Since me and Sayan dragging behind stopped couple of times to take pics. We stopped 3 times for the pics which left us way behind. We were some 30mins behind Harshad. We stopped next to a bridge to take some pics. The scenery around us was very good and Sayan as usual was on to getting his pics clicked. I spotted few sea eagles but unfortunatly I didn’t have cam and sayan’s cam didn’t have the essential zoom 

We reached Dandeli around 6:30PM,  way late than we had expected. The banglore guys Gautam and Gaurav were already there.  The guys from Hyderabad had not come. The guys were slow due to bad roads and they managed to reach only around 12:30 to the destination.

Day 2: Synthery rocks, croc trek and bonfire

The second day everyone woke up at ease. I think I woke up at around 7:00-8:00. I don’t remember. Abhishek (Jolu warrior) who slept late at 12:30 was awake early while Chinmaya and Sayan who had slept early were still sleeping. After having breakfast I was getting ready for the ride only to know later that we were being given 4×4 to travel. Sayan was quick to get in and have him clicked. He got very good snaps of him. Soon everyone there got on the 4×4 to get himself clicked.  There were two jeeps for us. The drive was fun,  I was on the back of the jeep with Amod. The drive was downhill and the jeep behind us had some heavy weights. The driver of that vehicle had to brake many a times to slow down the momentum 

[Add pic of sythery rocks here]