The Motorcycle Diaries (Part 1) - The Fellowship of the Bikers

Well, first of all, this blog post is not at all related to the iconic Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. But yes, this one is about a legendary, ultra awesome and super godly bike trip. Continuing my bad habit of finding time to blog only on special occasions, the reason for you reading this is - that I've survived successfully for 2 years in Hyderabad and it has been quite an enlightening experience both personally and professionally. While I will be happy to en-cash my 24th pay check at the end of this month, this has been a unique phase of life and has seen its fair share of crests and troughs. Hyderabad, Oracle, 205-Silpa Emerald - there are so many things from these 2 years which have turned me over, flipped me inside out and changed me to some extent but this blog is not about all those things. Its about 2 grand days when me, Lord and SRK (names modified for the sake of protecting... usual stuff) "planned" a bike trip to Nagarjuna Sagar Dam and what followed next on the weekend was indeed, a tragic comedy of errors - but being engineers and being used to last minute management (read chaos), we ended up enjoying it never the less !!

To make this sound sweet and short (very difficult for me) I will just split this up chronologically with respect to time, assumption and the resultant blunders interspersed with moments of awesomeness. Read ahead at your own risk.

1) Time stamp - 11 June, 2010 (8 PM)
Place - Random cubicle, 3rd Floor, Campus Phase 2, Oracle IDC - Hyderabad

Lord - "abe kal nagarjun sagar chal raha kya? SRK and me are going. Its about 175 kms from Hyderabad."
Me - "Oh yesss... I've been dying to go to that place, or rather any place which is far away and would let me drive for a long time !! lekin ek locha hai, I've something important to do tomorrow, can we go on sunday please?"
Lord - "abe we need to get MOCKed at on sunday, we need to go tomorrow only"
Me - (cursing) "hmm... wait... (calls A - gives the number of B, calls B - gives the number of A, apologies etc) chal locha resolved. I'm in !!"
Lord - "chalo abhi ghar jaate, kal subah 5 baje uthna (what a joke !!), me and SRK will rap you at 6 AM "sharp", okay ?"
Me - "wokay !!

2) Time Stamp - 11 June, 2010 (time unknown, probably late at night)
Place - Google Talk

this is a fictional but somewhat true reproduction of the possible conversation in author's own words, as he was not a part of this conspiracy...

SRK/Lord - "abe, Nagarjuna Sagar is effing 175 kms far away man, it will take super long to go and come back!!"
Lord/SRK - "we knew this already right ?"
SRK/Lord - "but now I'm having doubts whether we can actually survive on bikes for that long. It will be dee-fi-cult, you know..."
Lord/SRK - "ok, let's go to some place which is a bit closer, what about cool_place_abc ? Its about 50 kms only."
SRK/Lord - "great, that would be easy. What about Suyash?"
Lord/SRK - "we can't tell him right now. We will drop the bomb in the morning at 5 am regarding the change of plans. He wont even know what swept him over !!"
SRK/Lord - "awesome !!"

3) Time stamp - 12 June, 2010 (6:15 AM)
Place - 205, Silpa Emerald (via Vodafone cellular network)

Me - (after snoozing off the alarm for 15th time) "abe kya hua, tum log abhi tak aaye nahi? (as if I was all dressed up and ready), kitna late karoge ?"
Lord - "Yes, both me and SRK were unable to get up at 5 am (surprise !!). Abe Nagarjuna Sagar Dam is very far, apne ko poora din bhar lag jayega and it would be too tiring, lets go to cool_place_abc instead, what say?"
Me ---> got busy in putting convincing skills into play and after a few more phone calls to SRK...
Lord - "okay, we are going to Nagarjuna Sagar then... Lets start at 7 am."
Me - "wokay !!"

4) Time stamp - 12 June, 2010 (7:45 AM)
Place - Samrat Darshini, Kondapur
Distance Covered - 0.5 kms

while munching on plates of idli and wada sambhar with backpacks containing nothing but cameras and a water bottle, we chalked out the following "pee-lan" for the day...

Assumption #0 -

The place is about 175 kms away. Considering multiple stoppage points for chai and nature calls if any, we should be able to reach Nagarjuna Sagar at around 11:30 am something. We have dinner, we roam around the dam, then dish dash to the lake, get wet to get rid of the sweat and after some more rest, we head back ( I always knew there was a poet in me !!). If all goes well according to plan, we should be back to Hyderabad by lets say, 6:30 pm - 7 pm. Sounds great !! (alas, things happened so differently though :)

Blunder Sequence #0 -

We plan to get wet, but we don't take any spare clothes. We have a super long drive ahead, but we don't know how much fuel we have. We would be traveling to a remote place in AP and yet we decide to depend on ATM and Credit cards more than hard cash. (atm to har jagah hota hai, load kya hai ??) And of course, none of us is completely sure of the exact route as well, just a rough idea, we go with the google maps expert and depend on sun and helping people of AP as guides. I hope this should provide a somewhat translucent picture of the disasters which were waiting for us in the near future!! It took us about 45 minutes to get outside Hyderabad city and we topped up our fuel tanks to the max limit (by credit card, thank God) before hitting the highway to hell... err Nagarjuna Sagar i.e. on the expressway called NH 9.

And thus the fellowship of us 3 bikers with our trusted motorcycles - pulsar 150 cc (new one), an xcd 135 cc (unique piece) and another pulsar 150 cc (old one) began a very very eventful bike trip - which lay in store for us some really unforgettable memories. Since the entire trip ultimately stretched further beyond our present imagination, I need to continue this further in the sequel. Please do wait with bated breath for - The Motorcycle Diaries (Part 2) - The Two Blunders.