"Don't Put Sugar, Please"

"Please don't put sugar, didi" I blurted out with my hand stretched, but I had used the word "cheeni" and before I could stop her, Maruti's wife had already put a spoon of "shakkar" in the lemon tea. Sugar gives me acidity and leaves a sour aftertaste. She looked at me, puzzled. Marathis call sugar "shakkar" pretty much like we do in many other Indian languages. I realized if I ask her for sugarless tea now, she would have to make it again. So I gestured that everything is fine and accepted the red tin cup with both hands. It was a tiny cup that had seen better days. But it was the best Maruti's wife had.

It was early in the morning and there was a chill in the air, and I was happy for the hot cup of beverage.

The previous evening, in a bid to find a place to stay near Panshet Dam, I had lost my way somewhere along the banks of the huge lake and circumnavigated the entire catchment in search of some GPS signal. If the motorbike had stalled, I couldn't have pushed it back to civilization, and if it fell, I didn't have the strength to pick it up.

Going back to Pune meant another sleepless night with my friends who are die-hard nocturnal beings. And I had to explore more of Maharastra after having covered Panchgani, Mahabaleswar, and Pratapgarh Fort earlier that week. I came across a signboard with Panshet Valley View Resort written on it, pointing upward into the hills, and reached the place after 30 mins of negotiating broken roads through dense jungles. The sun was going down, the cicadas were out with a commitment to make the entire place sound eerie, and the little man Maruti was standing at the gate like a spirit. He didn't look surprised to see me. "Come in," he welcomed me with a smile.

It was a sprawling resort within the jungle with a pool, tents, normal rooms, rooms on stilts, a basketball court, a dorm, and a kitchen. My spirits were lifted. Finally a place to shack up for the night, then. Where are the others, I inquired.

Nobody, sir, there's nobody. They come on the weekends from Pune. Couples, mostly, he added. Sometimes large families and groups as well. By now he had opened the lock to a room with a spectacular view of the lake. I was in two minds about staying there and going out again in search of another place in the wilderness. We settled for a price that included my dinner and breakfast, and by then the sun had slunk away behind the hills, leaving a last bit of orange and blue on the sky. I couldn't have clutched on to the colors to ward off the gremlins in my mind. They come visiting on a solitary night. The full moon cast moving shadows of trees on the glass door to the balcony, and some restless night birds joined the cicadas. Have you heard a frog calling for help as it slides into a snake's mouth? It sounds like a groan that starts off as a tenor sax, and then gets higher in pitch like a shrill cry, before suddenly going absolutely quiet. I pulled the curtains and could feel my throat going dry.

Somebody knocked on the door. Chicken sukka and salad for dinner, sir.

I don't remember when I slept. I finished a book I had been meaning to read for a long time. The epilogue talked about how the book was originally written in 69, but was revisited in 1984. Read like a pastiche, I thought as I pulled the patchwork quilt over me, trying to push away the cold, slithering snakes crawling up my legs.

The morning was at 6.25, and sunrise precisely at 7.00. I busily clicked some pics, packed my little bag, and left. On the way out, Maruti called me to his house. But you had asked for an omelet for breakfast, he asked. I tried talking to him about intermittent fasting and then realized I must sound like a joker to them. As we grow older, we should eat lesser. He nodded in silent agreement. By then a little kid with a warm smile had come out to play on the porch. I gave him my metal water bottle to play with, when Maruti's wife got me the lemon tea.

On the way to Sinhagadh Fort I could see the jawans of the army jogging up the fort road in full gear. I waved at them and they waved back. I found myself smiling as I kept rolling my tongue, waiting for the sour aftertaste of sugar to set in.

Strangely, it was sweet.

Three States and a Biryani

BOOM…BOOM…BOOM…

When I came to, I could see myself fast approaching a gate that was coming down slowly, like an automatic boom barrier, accompanied with an intermittent boom boom sound... Dead Dog crossed the gate and I followed him...and immediately after that was a second gate, absolutely identical, which was coming down at the same pace as well! Only Dead Dog managed to cross the second gate, but I didn't. It was then that I realized I was on railway tracks, and had nowhere to go. There was another local fellow on a bike stuck with me.

I looked back.

Someone on the other side of the first gate frantically waved at us to come to his side of the tracks. The other fellow went across. I turned my bike and followed suit, and before I could realize, the Bangalore-Chennai Shatabdi Express thundered past just a few meters behind me. I had no clue where it came from and how fast, and that was when I properly woke up, shaken to the core. Someone was holding the handle of my bike steady to ensure I don’t get sucked into the vacuum and splatter against the train PHACHAAAAAK like in a comic book.

I was just about to die, a day short of my 48^th birthday, but what was I doing asleep on a running bike anyway!

When you plan a day-long bike ride in June, you tend to forget that you’re gonna leave the cooler climes of Bangalore and head into the dense heat of the neighboring states. Dead Dog had this 350-km trail riding planned for Sunday, and we started early at 6 a.m. from Hosur Road. Hosur Road starts from Bangalore and goes southward towards Shoolagiri and Krishnagiri, from where one the road turns left towards Vellore and Chennai, and another goes straight toward Salem and Kanyakumari. But we weren't gonna stick to the highway. We had other plans. 

We both ride Triumph Street Twins, and have modded our bikes a bit. We've moved from Pirellis to Timsun 659s, for better off-road grip, changed the fork oil for a more pliant front suspension, and while I have left the springs untouched, Dead Dog has put progressive springs at the front and also rear suspension from the old Continental GT by Paioli. We have put handlebar raisers for a more relaxed riding stance. X-pipes for de-cat and shorter silencers will follow, but for now, we're both happy with our rides.
About 10 km after Shoolagiri there’s a left turn through village roads towards Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh. From the broad, open highway, we suddenly found ourselves on a narrow, tree-lined road, but well paved. Dead Dog stopped at a place and expressed his disgust with the road being so smooth and beautiful. So much for trails riding, he said, but frankly I was enjoying the road. There were twisties, very few vehicles, and some wide-eyed villagers wondering where these aliens came from. Most of all, even at 8 in the morning, we could hear the birds tweeting, a soothing respite from the din of the concrete jungle. We reached a place that’s at the border of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Only Karnataka was on the other side of a hill. 

Here we stopped to click some pics of the dense jungle, spotted some “elephant crossing” signboards, and as we went onwards to Kuppam, we inadvertently steamrolled some butterflies with our helmet visors. One might have entered my mouth. Didn’t taste anything like butter though.

I must have fallen asleep around this time. Maybe not fully asleep, but very drowsy. After finding myself on the railway tracks and narrowly escaping a gory death, I was wide awake and looking for some Red Bull, but found a lot of bulls and some coffee at a tea stall instead. The old lady sweetly asked us to stay back for lunch. It’s too hot out there, and am making brinjal curry and rice, she said. But we were headed for Khaja Restaurant at Vaniyambadi, for some mutton biryani. We were going along the railway track, criss-crossing it, and at one place even went underneath the track, squeezing through a narrow tunnel made for otters (video).

By 10.20 in the morning we had reached Khaja Restaurant. The biryani wasn’t ready, said an old man, but you can wait for ten more minutes. By then it was already very hot in Tamil Nadu, and we waited, tongues hanging, more for the heat than for the food. I watched how one man meticulously tied at least a hundred packets of raita in those ten minutes. Vaniyambadi is famous for its biryani, but then it isn’t a very clean town. The main road is rather congested like any other mofussil town of India, and traffic is chaotic. Couple it with the summer heat and the beggars on the road, and you have a very unsavory picture.  



The mutton biryani with quail pepper fry on the side was gobbled up in no time, but all I wanted to do was to head back home after that. It was around 11.00, the sun was looking fiercely down on us, kinda unrelenting, and I wanted good roads. Enough of trail riding on a Triumph Street Twin. We need a Hero Xpulse maybe.

Dead Dog would have none of it, though. He was determined to find his way through the villages of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh all the way to Mulbagal on Old Madras road.

He’s called Dead Dog because he once ran over a dog. Some call him Tandoori Nai, but Dead Dog kinda stuck. I followed him, and he followed Google Maps. Through some villages on Punganur Road, we were promised that Old Madras Road is only some 20 km away, when we suddenly came to the road’s end. A man hurriedly approached us on a Hero Honda Splendor and informed us that many bikers have vanished in the jungles mysteriously, while some were found in the ditch. “On bigger bikes than yours” he added. Must have been someone on a Triumph Tiger or BMW 1200 GS.

A little monkey brrrrred at me from the tree above when I drank the last few drops from my water bottle. I brrrred back at him and realized he’s probably asking for water. I had nothing left to give the poor little fellow, so made some unintelligible sounds, called it bubbi and kibbli, and went on my way. Back to the main road this time.

The last stretch to Mulbagal was a fair bit of off-roading because the road is being broadened. The front forks loaded with 20W Motul oil held up pretty well, and the Timsun 659 tyres instilled a fair bit of confidence in me. These are so much better than the OEM Pirelli Sport Demons the Street Twin comes shod with, and give you that extra faith to take your bike off the road.

Mulbagal to Bangalore is 93 km of straight highway, so it was an uneventful ride apart from a cooling stop at Polar Bear for some ice-cream. The overcast sky in the rear-view mirror was catching up with us, and during the last stretch we found a few drops of relief.

How long was today's ride, I asked Dead Dog on WhatsApp.
"Dunno, maybe 350 kms. But there’s a tri-state border with Kerala here," and he sent me a google maps location of a new place.

Dude, isn’t that gonna be an over-nighter?
Yes.

Time to look for a tent now. Oh, and stack up on Red Bull, coz I don’t like trysts with bloody trains no more.