First things first. The bike seemed out of tune. Am not taking any chances with that. Off to the RE dealer who happened to be next door. The carburettor tuning was off completely hitting the mileage. The electric start bearings had stopped working (happened ages ago) and were now affecting the magnet’s movement leading to problems in the starting. Also got the front brakes checked. Took me all day but all problems are now gone and it should be a smooth, fast, painless ride.
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I was woken up by the banging on the door. Thankfully it wasnt’t the bald man from Hitman 2 (more ruthless than the one in the first Hitman) but Gols’ mother. I got up, realized I had no toothpaste and was too lazy to ask for it, lied to her about brushing and hogged on massive amounts of payasam and corn flakes with fruits after showing appropriate amount of reluctance. I was set when her mom dropped the laughing bomb. The car was in the driveway and I needed to back it out, take out the bike and drive it back in. Its a laughing bomb because 1. I was laughing because I was getting to drive a car (I don’t know how to drive. Yes. Me. Don’t know how to drive a car). 2. Gols would be under imaginary rubble if he heard I was going to do that to his car and laugh with the helplessness of a mule with a huge load on his back.
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So staying back in Kolkata has had double benefits to me.
One, thanks to Gols and his enterprising mother, I have a bag full of clean undies. As Pal said very rightly, I wouldn’t want to show my crack all over India, would I?
And two, I got to attend Sailor’s wedding. And meet a bunch of friends from B-School days. Best days of life.
Leave a CommentWhen I left Siliguri, there was but one thought in my head. I have to ride on those godforsaken screwed up potholed roads all over again. I had thought of doing an ironbutt ride all the way into Orissa but the thought of riding fast on those roads sent shudders down my spine and I settled for two days to Kolkata routine.
Leave a CommentThousands of miles away from home, your butt sore with riding pain, your eyes full of dreams and scenes you have seen but not believed, the last thing you expect is someone walking up to you and being so nice you can’t believe it. Well so it happened. Here in Siliguri. The last place I had thought it could ever happen.
Leave a CommentI had planeed a maximum of 4 days in Sikkim. This is the smallest state in India. And guess what, I stayed here the longest. I stayed here for 10 full days. Yes, even J&K barely lasted that long. And that is 50 times bigger than Sikkim. Probably more. I scanned the very ends of the place. Extreme points where one could go on wheels. Two wheels. Two untracked wheels (if I had wheels with tracks like tanks, I would definitely have gone further). And it was great.
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I woke up with a bad headache. All through last night, I was thinking. Very hard. All the people who had said earlier that touring alone was heavy on the mind and energy sapping had not mentioned just how tough it was to go on alone. On an on. Day after day. But that later.
Leave a CommentAm back now. India defeated England. Again.
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Till yesterday night, I hadn’t realized that Gurudongmer Lake was over 125 kilometers away from Lachung. And that for covering that part, Lachen was a better place to make a base. One needed to return from the lake to the army base by afternoon to stay on the safe side of weather.
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It was only after waking up today that I realized the Yumthang Valley I have heard so much about is only 28 kilometers away. That meant the trip will be over in about three hours with nothing to do for the rest of the day. For a town that sleeps at 8, thats a sobering thought.
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