October 4, 2011

Passage To Home, The Push Of A Lifetime :P

This post of a satirical take on the recently concluded bike trip to Ladakh, ( Passage to Ladakh, The Ride Of A Lifetime.) with the similar sounding title.

2 weeks of riding in one of the most inhospitable terrains in the world in our humble 2 wheelers and I had pretty much envisioned all sort of worst case scenarios. Puncture's, snapping of clutch wires, getting stranded in snow, rear wheel coming off during the ride, the engine exploding and so forth (U should at least get a hint of what I was expecting :P) and with the greatest fear of getting stranded in some remote location till eternity. But thankfully nothing of such sort really happened and in the end we had nothing more than a few punctures and a clogged carburetor ( in other bikes of course), a very tame scenario when compared to my so called 'Deja Vu' visions and not a scratch on my Pulsar 180, which came out with flying colors.

But an incident back home here in Bangalore put a huge full-stop on the invincible status of my bike.

The Day:
30 September 2011

The Time:
10 pm Onwards

The Event:
Heavy downpour over the city of Bangalore.

I was returning late from office thanks to attending college in morning and then all of a sudden it starts to rain cats and dogs. Since I am the sort of person who likes to ride in the rain, I continued riding after getting some sort of protection for the electronics with me. But as I neared Lalbagh there was a big rain water pool in the middle of the road. Rode through this carefully and was successful in crossing it. But the problem were to descend upon me only after crossing this. Suddenly the engine was dying , sputtering to a stop. I guessed water must have entered the engine and after waiting for some 5 min in the heavy downpour tried to start it again. Still no response. Now the actual gravity of the situation dawned upon me. I was still around 8kms from my home.

First solution that came to my mind was to ditch the bike, get some transport to home and come back the next day for the bike. But thanks to heavy rain and time being post 10 pm there were literally no public transport or auto's plying on the roads. Now I was left to fend for myself. This is something which I had never imagined even in my worst nightmare , getting stranded within one's own city, just 8 kms from home :P. Anyway since having no other option decided to walk the remaining distance and quite wrongly assumed pushing the bike all the distance wont be problem too. So started the push of epic proportions, in a heavy downpour, almost nearing midnight, with the entire road pretty much deserted and occasionally dogs coming out of their shelter to bark at me and go back.

There were pretty huge inclines to climb and pushing the bike is surely a killer combo. The majority of the roads were filled with knee deep water and vehicles passing by were just splashing it left and right, pretty much no place for me to hide :P. And as expected within reaching half of the distance I was gasping for breath, as if I had run a marathon. But surprisingly (when I look back at what I did) I didn't give up pushing the bike. The primary reason being since I had already pushed half a distance and it would make no sense to ditch it after going through all the pain of pushing all this distance (glass half full concept :P). Finally reached home and flashed a "V" sign when my worried mom opened the doors :). "TASK COMPLETED !!!!!". (Took 1.5hrs for the 8 km dash :P )

After this incident I have truly come to the accept the fact that when the luck of the person is favorable, then it doesn't matter if he is in the remotest corner of the world, or among the deadliest people he will come out without a scratch, but if it is not favorable then the garden of Eden surely transforms itself to hell as it did for Adam & Eve and so did it for me. Luck is a bi**h  :P.

P.S. Anyway it was a great workout and a super-duper confidence booster having pushed the bike for 8 kms :P.

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