One week. We're on our way now. The safety of the harbour is behind us. We'd intended to give ourselves a month to finalize what we're going to be doing. But the first item we picked looks so really like a low hanging fruit that we plan to build that product first, in the first month, and then proceed on. (It's probably also because, you know, it somehow feels more comfortable to be doing work than planning what to be working on.)
Started up
I'm out of job, guys, and am in the process of starting a startup (as yet unnamed) with Girish. Wish us luck, will you?
The Ex-Road Trip
I ushered in the new year in the middle of a jungle, with the sky for a roof, in the good company of a good many creaky trees, lots of undergrowth, two smoldering campfires, and a bunch of slightly-scared-and-totally-exhausted comrades, with no clue how far from civilization we all were.
The plan was to trek from Kodaikanal (or Berijam, about 25km from Kodaikanal) to Munnar (or Top Station, about 30km from Munnar), a total distance of about 50km, over two days. We were to take the Escape Road, the road that the British built during the Second World War, as a means to get to Calicut and sail away in case the Japanese invaded India from the east (oddly enough, the only place I could find this gem of a tidbit on the net (and more on Kodai) was, of all places, the transcript of a WorldSpace radio programme on Sai Baba). This road is no longer maintained and though overgrown with undergrowth (hee hee), we thought we should be able to follow it coolly. I'd poked around on the net and found one blog that had an excruciatingly detailed appendix describing the route to be followed for this trek.
The plan was to trek from Kodaikanal (or Berijam, about 25km from Kodaikanal) to Munnar (or Top Station, about 30km from Munnar), a total distance of about 50km, over two days. We were to take the Escape Road, the road that the British built during the Second World War, as a means to get to Calicut and sail away in case the Japanese invaded India from the east (oddly enough, the only place I could find this gem of a tidbit on the net (and more on Kodai) was, of all places, the transcript of a WorldSpace radio programme on Sai Baba). This road is no longer maintained and though overgrown with undergrowth (hee hee), we thought we should be able to follow it coolly. I'd poked around on the net and found one blog that had an excruciatingly detailed appendix describing the route to be followed for this trek.And now, for something completely different
Those guys the Python language was named after, was how I knew Monty Python as. And that was all I knew of them till Version One Dot Oh came along one evening to our office (yes, really) and staged a few hilarious Python sketches. I really did think VODO were fundo thespians, until I watched their Harvey, which can actually manage, on a scale of one to ten, a respectable minus two, if the rating process had been fixed, in VODO's favour (Well, actually it was passable - you know how it is, na - calling something crap can be delightfully hedonistic).
Leh: Back
Surprise, surprise - we made it. Safe, grinning, and rather impressed with ourselves.
And we did manage it a lot better than I would have expected. 0 casualties, 1 injury, 1 puncture, 2 damaged clutch plate sets, 1 cut clutch wire. All seven of us doing fine. All bikes in riding condition. Yeah, looks like we were really safe drivers.
With zero out-of-the-city biking experience, it does take some nerve and a bit of audacity to take on this route. And the reward is a whale of a time. The drive alternates between exhilerating, dangerous and tricky, as fast as the scenery changes between green slopes of grass or pine, cold desertlands and barren mountains in wild dashes of colour.
One avid biker (well, he just became one) in our group, Sriram, has finally started blogging all the nitty-gritties. Hope he manages to finish it too.
So there. Riding a ~200kg cruiser for ~2500kms, about a thousand of that in the Himalayan roads, is fun, back-breaking and perfectly doable. Nothing audacious about it, really. Trust me, I know.
Photos from this trip: by Shanthi and Jomy, and by Roop (my camera conked early on)
And we did manage it a lot better than I would have expected. 0 casualties, 1 injury, 1 puncture, 2 damaged clutch plate sets, 1 cut clutch wire. All seven of us doing fine. All bikes in riding condition. Yeah, looks like we were really safe drivers.
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With zero out-of-the-city biking experience, it does take some nerve and a bit of audacity to take on this route. And the reward is a whale of a time. The drive alternates between exhilerating, dangerous and tricky, as fast as the scenery changes between green slopes of grass or pine, cold desertlands and barren mountains in wild dashes of colour.
One avid biker (well, he just became one) in our group, Sriram, has finally started blogging all the nitty-gritties. Hope he manages to finish it too.
So there. Riding a ~200kg cruiser for ~2500kms, about a thousand of that in the Himalayan roads, is fun, back-breaking and perfectly doable. Nothing audacious about it, really. Trust me, I know.
Photos from this trip: by Shanthi and Jomy, and by Roop (my camera conked early on)
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
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: 1Wish us luck. We'll need it.
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?
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.
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.
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