Jan 04, 2005
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. Soon the compound resembled a Bullet workshop. Morning walkers, residents and passer-bys peered curiously with interesting expressions. Some of them went ahead and asked... who you guys, where you from and where you headed... Some others didn't and passed on by. Losers!!! :-) I would have so loved to see their shocked expressions once they heard my answer - We're going to Kutch and I've ridden from Bangalore for it... Ah! the shock value!!! Immense :-)

An Eicher 6-wheeler was in sight. It was to be our backup vehicle (we all would find that out much later what a life saver it was). For now it was used as the luggage dump, the palace on wheels carrying our cooked and uncooked food, and the pantry car with parts of a re-assemblable kitchen and oh yeah... a stage for the Class Monitor when he wanted to wield the stock on his unruly class :-)

Meanwhile the workshop was trying to cope with bikes having niggling problems - Nikhil was applying oil of olay to Dhanno's oily rash under Sanju's eagle eye. She basically needed a leak; someone else had run off to get a new air filter for Dhanno. Prem was attending to his Predator, Saurabh had dashed off to a local Bullet workshop and there I was, proud owner of my butterfly - patting her behind for being such a good girl and not making me run around since we started from Bangalore except the one time when she got cranky for fuel at Valsad.

Breakfast arrived just then. My fever had turned tail a couple of days back and I was always ravenous. The caterer deserves a mention - an extremely nice chap who fed us good food and in fact seeing the last nights melee at Gaurav's had even offered his place to a few of us to crash out. Since all of us were sold on the idea of a 60kph orgy - heheh - his offer found no takers. THAT! was a great decision as it made strangers into friends - literally overnight!

As we ate, dinner packets were loaded into the back-up vehicle. To me it seemed, that we were a pack of nomads - movement being our only constant... with no place called home... with every stop converted into a home and left without any feeling of attachment... The only difference being that our caravan was Bullet ridden! Just when I was thinking all these deep thoughts :-), the nomadic movement started. Slowly but surely. The apartment, our temporary home was emptying out. Bereft of our belongings, the place looked lonely - like a ravaged war zone. (my mom would have freaked out seeing the state of the house). Gaurav, the housekeeper took the mess in his stride - with not one word of complaint regarding the complete absence of our collective housekeeping skills.

The Clock was ticking away. Ready or not we were running late, said the Monitor. He had a point too. With a group as big as this, there is always a drop in the average speed which was dangerous since we had to reach Tikar before sunset.

There is a limit, you see, to how much one can sex-up pitching of tents after dark.

So off we went, thumping towards Don's workshop to await the others who were tending to their bikes elsewhere. Tea, photos and inspection of Don's Den later, the Night halt was fixed - Tikar (A village at the periphery of the Rann of Kutch) before sunset. AAA (Association for Automobile Assistance) - Amol, Anuj and Ajay - led; Histu and Shrikanth tailed and Gaurav was the backbone - in the middle. Gaurav had taken upon himself the task of Lead to the second half and Sweep to the the first half :-). And that was an unenviable function. Move! Move! Move! The caravan assembled and started rolling and hit the highway. Sanju for once was behind me ;-)

At one intersection we had to take a right and as soon we were going to, a traffic cop sitting on a milestone sprung to his feet. My heart sank. Is a right turn permitted on this intersection or not? But surprise surprise! His sudden reflex action was to stop the oncoming traffic towards us! A speeding car was forced to a sudden halt with a hand signal and a curse. the cop seemed to have got to his feet to ensure that we got right of way! The traffic was at a stand still as all of us passed. Wow! Everyone makes way for a Bullet or at least makes sure everyone else makes way :-) This time a cop was doing it.

This land mark right turn - a free advertisement for Royal Enfield, led us to interior roads and we were steadily covering ground. Sanju, suddenly, was off my rear view radar. I remembered his disappearing act in Kolhapur to motograph the misty morning, so cocked my brow at what was the event that demanded his stopping this time. Phew... this guy... he's never in the place he's supposed to be. The knowledge that the sweeps would sweep him along if he was lagging came as a relief. And if nothing else, Gaurav the backbone was there always in the middle, behind us, to help him out if Dhanno had an issue. Then suddenly I see Prem zip past towards the AAA. All halted. What happened?? Dhanno, it seemed had blown a fuse - I mean the spark plug cap had came off, which was being dealt with. Saurabh too had suffered a breakdown, but all was well and the backbone had sent instructions to ride ahead to the next stop - a petrol bunk to tank up the machines.

In 40 minutes, 26 bikes were topped up at the Petrol bunk during which time it was our exclusive property :-). From here on there was to be no stopping till Tikar except for directions. It was nearing lunch time and I could hear the distinct rumbling of my tummy. Nobody else was complaining or planning to stop. Which was a good thing too as one stop would lead to losing precious time and we all knew the urgency to hit Tikar before sunset.

One could feel that Kutch was nearing - basically because civilization was falling behind :-). A bad stretch of road which we were riding at the time was one live example that it in fact was. I was tailing Freya at that point and saw her slip her saddle at least once, maneuvering her Musafir on that stretch. Far away in view was the Kutch periphery and the land on both sides of the road was dry, lined with thorny bushes. Here and there we saw signs cautioning against Wild asses which I assumed would jump onto the so-called road without honking ;-). The BSF post on our Tulip came up and from here we were to take a right again. The abandoned railway track which came next was the unofficial regroup point and Vijaya was kind enough to open some biscuit packets which everyone attacked. At that point in 'hungry time' they tasted like "Black forest" to me.

Our assembly attracted the village crowd and I spotted a bat and a ball with them. Yeah, you guessed right, a short game of cricket followed with Shekhar and me representing the 60kph team. GR and others were into motography of the abandoned railway track.

Just as the game was warming up, the backbone arrived to straighten us all out. He brought along with him the rest of the tail and also news of a puncture and a clutch cable snap which was set right while we played cricket. I guessed it was Prem and Praveen's bikes. Shit man, i'm always an extra :-). Oops, we were getting late and there was no time to muse so we rolled. Interestingly not too much time seemed to have been lost, considering what a big pack we were. Next stop was at the next village to ask for directions.

The reception was nothing to write home about. To think that we were planning lunch here at Halvad (I think) was now unimaginable. Partly because it was too late in the afternoon and partly because of the reactions of the village folk. The villagers stared at us as if we were morons because we were heading for hmm... Rann! I found that an interesting reaction to watch. Interesting since one can draw a direct co-relation of that to our everyday life. What we don't know is mystery and what we know is plain dumb routine - no matter how preciously perfect it is to the outsider.

No water, no food... What will u do in Rann and what's there to see? They all asked.

Well! What would we do? Nothing, I guess! I doubt they would understand or anybody can. The spirit of adventure that drives a few of us into inhospitable terrains - A Las Vegas was needed to bring people into the deserts of Nevada. And the Rann still was... after all... just the Rann... A listless, eventless patch of land where the sea once was and had had left long since... It was we, who had made a destination out of it by choosing to celebrate the anniversary of 60kph there. Besides, Isn't it ok to sometimes have no plan as such? Visit the unknown, unexplored, just for the sake of it? That is exactly what we were doing. And doing it, as Gaurav always says, in true 60kph isshtyle!

With the bemused villagers still staring aghast at our behinds, we moved towards a railway crossing waiting for the train to pass and when it did, we crossed over into dust filled paths leaving them with their questions. We were driving on no-roads situation here. In fact the dust was so deep and one had to do limb acrobatics to keep balance. Titli was behaving herself phenomenally and just in case she slipped, I was keeping my legs in the air as side balances. Driving like that we reached Tikar around 5 PM and parked at the chosen junction. People started gathering around us one by one, and before we realised, the whole village was surrounding us!s

This time it was different reaction and the villagers were happy to see us. Now that's what I call spirit! if I cant go to somebody else's home, for a change, I will welcome them to mine!

I started conversing with the school kids and soon was taking a roll call of their names. Hetal, Sheetal, to name a few. Motographed a lot as well. What was exciting us was causing angst to Gaurav, it seemed. He was vying with the villagers for our attention :-) And to get that, he had major competition :-) Nicky was in the process of making the villagers' day! She took off her helmet and the unveiling of a woman's face underneath it had the whole crowd ogling at her in pure disbelief. Not one to be cowed down by a lack of response, Gaurav climbed on top of the back-up vehicle to say what he wanted to (I had a fair idea why Gaurav was getting so excited, it wasnt a great idea to attract so much attention of the locals especially since we would be camping nearby). But funnily enough, Gaurav's move in that setting made him look like a village Sarpanch or Gabbar Singh cracking his belt on rocks to get his gang's attention! Was anybody paying heed to his message :-)? Hmm, yes and no. I spied Praveen on top of a compound wall clicking the moment; I was busy clicking Praveen :-)

But we did hear and we did pay heed and so we did roll on...

Tar roads were a thing of the past, Gaurav had already spotted a possible camping site and so he made a beeline for it expecting us to follow... But since it wasn't as straight as the crow flies and didn't fall in the track we were on, we almost missed him. Most of us eventually came back to it; Meher and one more guy overshot for quite a bit and took some time reaching back to the chosen halt. A big tree towered nearby. Our bikes were parked under it in sheer reverence for its standing in such distinct grace in such stark surroundings...that picture is to be kept in my memory for a long time... It found its way into everyones photoalbums in the meantime.

The backup vehicle also rolled in soon after. The site had a broken wall which was ideally suited for lighting a fire for cooking and would be used later in the night. Most of us got busy pitching tents and Meeta and others began preparing sandwiches which were passed on to the men building shelters for the night. Karthik, Nikhil and Sanjeev were tackling my tent which could serve as a home to upto 5 people. This was its inauguration - its first time out in the field and it came up tops. Dipesh decided that there is safety in numbers so he chose a spot next to us but Nikhil managed to foul up his plans. He whispered, loud enough for Dipesh's benefit, "Who knows who will enter, in whose tent when its pitch dark!" That did it! It was enough to plant a seed of doubt in Dipesh's head and he immediately shifted base far away from all of us. Ostensibly to keep his French treasure safe from us louts.

Darkness crept upon us as slowly as the sun set. The site looked like a nomads colony with each class doing their assigned activity on any given day. The tents were pitched by the boys. The seniors (or more serious) had gone for a very long walk to inspect the surrounding areas. Gaurav and others :-). Those competent and able were handling kitchen stuff. In fact, the Kitchen department had some teething problems as their equipment had a re-assembly issue. The head of the AAA team - Amol (with Jay) went back to the village to find some spares for faulty stove parts and came back victorious :-) This, I might add, was merely, his maiden nocturnal venture with many more scarier outings to follow. All jobs done, a carpet was spread for the community to chill and everyone who till now were chatting in groups took a place next to each other.

The Kings Court was now in session :-). A bonfire was lit. The junta (some curious villagers) joined in... the bar was open... Birbal (Saurabh) was at his job of entertainment... Food was ready. And it was a self-serve routine. Music was missing but once fed I get sleepy. Made eye contact with my tentmates, they immediately concurred so four of us bid good night to Saurabh and his still roaring with laughter Court. Sleeping in a sleeping bag, sleeping in a sleeping bag inside a tent, sleeping in a sleeping bag inside a tent under open skies - are three TOTALLY different ways to use a sleeping bag :-)

Warm 'n' cozy and now knowing that the third way to use a sleeping bag rocked, my systems were shutting down for the day. Just then a mischievous voice just high enough for us to hear called out... "Wild boars and asses often come around at midnight". Hmm... Saurabh who was outside wielding the baton would surely be their first most obvious target, Thus keeping Saurabh between me and the imaginary wild boars gave me a temporary sense of security. Just enough to help me switch off for the night...