Leh: Flag off

It all starts tomorrow. The road trip. The third best, say some, but possibly the best we might get to do.

We're catching a flight on Saturday to Delhi, renting some Enfield Thunderbirds there, and biking off to Leh. Going a clockwise round trip of Delhi-Srinagar-Kargil-Leh-Manali-Delhi, about 2500kms in all, and will also be paying an exclusive visit to Khardung La, north of Leh, arguably the world's highest motorable road.

Abhi is just back from a biketrip to Leh, and between the five of them on seven bikes over 14 days, they had 15 gigs of photos, 1 puncture, 1 burnt sprocket, 1 damaged suspension, 1 hairline fracture and about 15 minor injuries.

Unlike Abhi's gang, we seven are a somewhat odd lot, without much biking experience (does trekking experience count?) With a who's who of riders looking like this:

The number of riders

who have fixed bikes before: 1
who ride a bike regularly: 5
who have ridden bikes regularly: 6
who have ridden an Enfiled for >10km: 0
who have biked on long trips: 2
our plan does look rather audacious, don't you think?

Wish us luck. We'll need it.

Ponniyin Selvan: The First Floods [ 0/5 ]

You don't get good Tamil books in Bangalore, and I've always picked some whenever I go to Tambiland. Last time, unusually, I picked up something in English - a translated version of Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan (a 5-part novel in Tamil about the Chola dynasty, set in 10th Century Tamil Nadu - arguably, the popularest Tamil novel ever). Gulti had asked me to pick it up for one of his friends. Girish, did you tell me you'd read a bit of a pathetic translation of Ponniyin Selvan? Was it by one Karthik Narayan by any chance? It must be, because it's the only one I found on the stands. And because it fits your description well.