Day 5 - Jan 3, 2005
For the first time in days, I woke up with no sense of urgency to hit the road. Just laid back and soaked it in -

The day's first sight - Gaurav bringing in the Newspapers and milk packets

The day's first sound - Gaurav instructing how to quick-wrap sleeping bags

The day's first food smell - fresh biscuit being unwrapped and

The day's first and ONLY luxury - I was handed tea

I looked around sleepily. The Logistics team was at it's Company act again and I was dying to get a peek in. I realised that Amol, the poker faced DON wont give me a role to play in this act even if I hung around the whole day on this Set. I was the proverbial Extra here.

So, with lots of time to kill I decided to explore Ahmedabad beyond CG road and floated the idea of Sabarmati Ashram. Prashant was the ONLY one who bought it. ( I shudder to think of my fate If I'd tried a career in marketing. But thank you Prashant for tagging along).

I was okay with taking a tuk tuk but the Don put in blandly - It's very easy to reach there - and gave out the directions as if he was sending Prashant and me on a hit job. His Assistant Director (escorting and accounts), Anuj, who was going on 'Company' duty, was to lead us to a certain point. And he did do that - he went right from that point and we were asked to go left. Which we did, BUT, despite our brimming confidence I promptly lost our way (There is no hope for me in a career as Guide either). We missed the Ashram which was on our right and instead found ourselves riding parallel to a railway line. Hmm... a passerby redirected us to the Ashram. We didn't want to be too adventurous so bikes were parked at a government office and we started on foot towards the Ashram gate. The first thing in sight was lots of police. Hmm... The Mahatma couldn't have died again. I wondered :-) THAT is a joke guys. We found out soon enough the reason of the presence of the contingent. Here is where we met India again! (remember we last met India at the toll into Gujarat) - a minister was visiting and the Ashram was closed till 2 PM! We joined a pack of equally disappointed foreigners to mourn how the ministers had taken over public visiting places :-)

Retail therapy saved me. I hopped across the road to shop for some Khadi shirts and then to the bikes.

Back to Gaurav's, Shreekant was rousing from his Kumbhakaran nidra, the Kutch's wild card entry. The "I was there" poster was being unveiled (it was aired for just for a few seconds and then hidden back). For longer spells of viewing, one had the option to gaze at a digicam photo. Hmm... I didn't do that since the poster had been done meticulously by my buddy Sanju and I was one of the few people who knew the secret while it was in it's designing stage heheh :-).

Just then, loud thumping rent the air. The Delhi gang seemed to have landed up. All of us bounded down to help them unload their luggage. The first one I met was Shekhar and Vijaya, followed by Aman, Praveen and Saurabh (I would later add the suffix - "the Great" to this name) . Luggage room started filling up.

By the time we finished dumping all their bags, Bullets were sounding outside again. This time it was the Hyderabad gang. All the faces were known to me except Meher, Manjunath and Lakshmi. I had met Ajay, GR and Seshu during the Belum ride that Sanju and I had done with our local Bangalore crowd. Their bags were unloaded too. The room was overflowing with luggage. There was loud chattering as everybody updated their news - Ajay had a fall, there were some bike problems, they had stopped at Mandeep's house at Valsad and started very early in the morning. Mandeep... I smiled, our torch in Valsad who had taken care of the cranky out of fuel Titli - Valsad also reminded me of Sanju. Where was he? Long life the guy has, because he arrived right that very minute from Anand with Dhruv. Dhanno, he said, had some problems so he left as fast as he came with a few of the other Hyderabad people who were headed to a Bike repair place.

Meanwhile, deadly sleep over, Kumbhkaran Shreekant was hungry, he came up with the idea of having lunch at a restaurant called Tomatoes. Prashant and me seconded it and off we all went to CG road in search of it before anybody could utter another word. I wish we had paused since it turned out to be a wild goose chase as the bloody place was closed. Closed for lunch! I thought Gujjus were pretty smart business men! A look at my watch and I knew why it was closed :-) it was 3:30 pm! Looks like it had to be boiled Potatoes for lunch today :-( But we were more resourceful than that, so we back tracked and ended up in restaurant where Gaurav and some of us had had pizzas n sandwiches the previous day.

On a full stomach, the paparazzi in me was now itching. Shreekant too, by now was fully fed and thus fully awake to the beautiful world of Gujarat. So we both started to check out and click some Gujju Beauties (please note, today I have graduated to calling them Beauties. Yesterday on a solo trip I preferred to call them Behnaii (sisters). Today with kumbhakaran for company, it was better. There is safety in numbers after all :-) (I have no future in a career as an "Anna" to the Dance bar maidens of Mumbai either)

We returned to find that a Beauty had arrived at Gaurav's.(Please note the absolute blacking out of the word Behnaii now. hehe! There were so many of us now and there is a lot more safety in lot more numbers :-) Her name was feather soft. Freya... A very strange tag on a lady with nerves of steel. She had just come in from Surat, rode alone from Bangalore covering Mangalore and Goa. Gawd Man! That was awesome. Her sheer gumption made me want to dump my aching gut in Gaurav's bath room bucket in disgust. There was only saving grace. She was from Bangalore too. Aha.

Meanwhile the compound outside Gaurav's grandpa's house looked like a Bullet workshop. Prem was fiddling with his and Dipesh's bike. That inspired me to fiddle with Titli which resulted in her getting more engine oil than necessary, the effects of my showing off my little knowledge of Bullets came to light only after I reached the Rider Mania in Panvel. Others, more clued into Bullets, were planning to visit Amol's workshop. Shreekant and I were busy searching for an automobile shop so we missed to join everybody else to the Don's place. Histu from Bombay had also reached meanwhile. Karthik from Royal Beasts stopped by with his one-of-a-kind machine. He was on his way to Rider Mania and wanted to do Kutch with us. The modifications done on his bike got everybody in rapt attention.

Please note that Saurabh's ears were especially tweaked up in recording position.

Everybody was itching to ride together as a precursor to Kutch so all of us rode as a pack to CG road much to the surprise of lazy shoppers there who stood back in awe and amazement. The Gujju's must have been reminded of Mad Max. I must say we looked quite a pack of threatening louts. An incident was waiting to happen with all the hormones charged up and it did after we tanked up our bikes at a gas station, Histu had a skirmish with a girl riding a Kinetic who was mesmerized by Histu and his 500.

Back to the Company set. The logistics team who had been holding back till then while we boys played, took over. Gaurav explained the Kutch route and chalked out the plan for the next day. Dinner was ready to be hogged which we did accompanied by booze. Really wet in dry gujju land! Once a bike gang starts talking, loosened up with booze and fab company, there is no stopping them. It seemed like this adda session would last the night. I needed my beauty sleep so hunted down my sleeping bag. Aman had the same idea. Sanju too tagged along and everyone else followed suit.

Because Gaurav had taken up positions in the Logistics team, his ants had crawled into Nikhil's pants. He regaled us with his encounter with the tribals and how his finger worked tricks on them. I was sleepy and raised a salute to his finger, which is mightier than a sword I would say. Finally he joined us in bed. Just when everyone was ready to drop off, someone punctured the sleep balloon. Night ride around Ahmedabad anyone? Hehehe! Sleep, no way! 8 of us jumped out of their sleeping bags and donned jackets before one could say "letz go". I was one of them. But I was too lazy to disturb my beautiful Titli's sleep, so rode Dhanno as pillion to Sanjeev. We stopped at a Dhaba and listened in rapt attention to Gaurav's previous ride experiences and funny incidents over tea. Tea after Booze with a good story teller is such a great combo, I didn't know that! Everyone was roaring to laughter with the way he was narrating. Not to be left behind, Saurabh The Great took the story telling baton from him and he didn't pass it on to anybody till after Kutch was finished. (I think he's still carrying it ;-)

We finally broke up the party. I rode Dhanno with Sanju as pillion as my buddy was freezing so I tried to shelter him from it. Amol, the Don, pushed off to his house at a circle and we reached Gaurav's to find the rest of the gang snoring. Saurabh wielded his story telling baton and hit the sleepers on their head. Waking up Aman from his deep slumber as also the rest of them. Saurabh was at his best and by now every one knew why his ears were peaked in recording mode when Karthik was explaining his bike's modifications.

The clock had struck 3 AM. This was like Sleepless in Seattle :-) This class needed some serious disciplining. The monitor (Gaurav) had been corrupted - with Saurabh's hoi hoi hoi... mazaa aagaya... gazab ho gaya... sadma lag gayaji... Thus it was left to us, lesser souls, to seize Saurabh's baton for the night and clamp down on his antics.

What a day it was... Let me correct myself... What a longggg day it was!

Tonite was a night to muse on a terrace, spread out on a charpoy, hands behind ur head, gaze at the stars and mull... "so kewl to be alive"...

But no such luck... Gaurav's wasn't a terrace flat; and Saurabh hadn't carried a charpoy with him from Delhi :-)

No issues... Did I say I was fussy? Nope... I just curled up in my sleeping bag with only one thought - Kutch was gonna be hotttt - with this gang. It's gonna be hotttt. With an Amen to that, I closed my eyes to the world.

Next...
Woke up next morning with butterflies in my stomach. Excited and eager to ride Titli with all my new friends, I jumped out of the sleeping bag, got ready and was out fiddling with her. The rest came trooping out to do the same thing a little later... (read on)

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