'The' Journey
Life's a constant learning curve. Even when you breath your last, you realise who are the important ones surrounding you and who chose to walk away. Moving on with life, meeting new people, finding friends in the most unlikely of them is just something I personally love. During a conversation, one such topic which came up was; "Who's your best friend?". This is definitely not as naive that you've to think back to your school days where you had one person has your best(est) friend. You dressed up similarly, ate together, played together, laughed and cried together. What my buddy was onto was that a best friend is situational, subjective. One day, a colleague who comes to rescue that mistake maybe that person, the other day it would be someone who saved you from the worst of situations. Feel another story in the making? Let's see shall we..
Regular readers would know by now that I enjoy riding, sometimes even without a destination in mind. One of those rides happened last week after some very basic planning. Place: Nandi Hills; meeting place and time were weary as usual. This would be the largest group I'd ever been with. Six bikes, seven of us, on what would be a very short ride and return home for lunch. The first glitch was our beloved 'wild boar' suffering a flat rear! Two of his 'best friends' decided to wait for him at the rendezvous point while the rest of us started the rather uneventful ride. Negligible traffic, clinically perfect ghat roads made way for a stellar time to reach the place. We all had our share of soaking in the views and enjoying some breakfast. A while later the rest of our convoy was there and after the usual round of pics, we started the descend. Having made it safely so far, I thought not much could go wrong since the rest of our journey was mostly on some very normal roads. I guess that was all about to change.
To reach Chikkballapur, we could've gone back to the main highway (read boring) or taken the path less traveled (read B-road via Nandi town). You'd figured out by now what we took the more exciting, less traveled road! Let me tell you straight away that it's a fantastic piece of tarmac with some very nice bends. It seemed harmless but exciting to ride here. It was a left hand curve that caught my eye. I took it in some good speed and then came the blind uphill-dowhill right hander. I was so not prepared for it. Maybe I'd under-estimated the corner, maybe I've been over-confident, maybe, maybe. These where the thoughts which came to my mind in the middle of the bend. Now, we all know you should not panic and break at these situations. While classroom learning is one, implementing the same was not possible. I panicked, braked, slid of the road and lay there for a couple of seconds. For someone to notice me, for someone to help me get back on my feet. Couple of seconds later, one of my friends spotted me and with the help of a few locals, lifted up me, my bike and made sure I was fine. By now, I could the rest of my friends there inspecting the bike, a few surrounding me, helping me with water and some Gatorade. A fuzzy memory, but I was definitely not able to cope with the heat, trauma and pain at that point. Sometime later, I realised that my clothes were in tatters, so was I and my bike. Trying not create a scene there, we went to a primary health clinic nearby, got some first aid and decided to leave my bike there. Since there was no other go but to come back with one of them, I endured more pain on the way back. It was only in the evening that we managed to get back safely after I had blacked out several times due to the shock and pain. Three of the best(est) friends went all the way back to get back my precious. I was asleep when they'd returned but surprisingly my parents were calm and supportive all this while. I've fallen, hurt myself badly, learnt to be a better a safer rider. But as I said earlier, I've met some amazing people during this journey, people who have helped me in very tough times. I owe you a lot guys, right from making sure that I was safe, upto consoling my parents and even venturing out at night only to bring back my bike safely.
Regular readers would know by now that I enjoy riding, sometimes even without a destination in mind. One of those rides happened last week after some very basic planning. Place: Nandi Hills; meeting place and time were weary as usual. This would be the largest group I'd ever been with. Six bikes, seven of us, on what would be a very short ride and return home for lunch. The first glitch was our beloved 'wild boar' suffering a flat rear! Two of his 'best friends' decided to wait for him at the rendezvous point while the rest of us started the rather uneventful ride. Negligible traffic, clinically perfect ghat roads made way for a stellar time to reach the place. We all had our share of soaking in the views and enjoying some breakfast. A while later the rest of our convoy was there and after the usual round of pics, we started the descend. Having made it safely so far, I thought not much could go wrong since the rest of our journey was mostly on some very normal roads. I guess that was all about to change.
To reach Chikkballapur, we could've gone back to the main highway (read boring) or taken the path less traveled (read B-road via Nandi town). You'd figured out by now what we took the more exciting, less traveled road! Let me tell you straight away that it's a fantastic piece of tarmac with some very nice bends. It seemed harmless but exciting to ride here. It was a left hand curve that caught my eye. I took it in some good speed and then came the blind uphill-dowhill right hander. I was so not prepared for it. Maybe I'd under-estimated the corner, maybe I've been over-confident, maybe, maybe. These where the thoughts which came to my mind in the middle of the bend. Now, we all know you should not panic and break at these situations. While classroom learning is one, implementing the same was not possible. I panicked, braked, slid of the road and lay there for a couple of seconds. For someone to notice me, for someone to help me get back on my feet. Couple of seconds later, one of my friends spotted me and with the help of a few locals, lifted up me, my bike and made sure I was fine. By now, I could the rest of my friends there inspecting the bike, a few surrounding me, helping me with water and some Gatorade. A fuzzy memory, but I was definitely not able to cope with the heat, trauma and pain at that point. Sometime later, I realised that my clothes were in tatters, so was I and my bike. Trying not create a scene there, we went to a primary health clinic nearby, got some first aid and decided to leave my bike there. Since there was no other go but to come back with one of them, I endured more pain on the way back. It was only in the evening that we managed to get back safely after I had blacked out several times due to the shock and pain. Three of the best(est) friends went all the way back to get back my precious. I was asleep when they'd returned but surprisingly my parents were calm and supportive all this while. I've fallen, hurt myself badly, learnt to be a better a safer rider. But as I said earlier, I've met some amazing people during this journey, people who have helped me in very tough times. I owe you a lot guys, right from making sure that I was safe, upto consoling my parents and even venturing out at night only to bring back my bike safely.
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