Memoirs of a Wandering Nomad

Surviving the Rann of Kutch -Epilogue to an expedition --------------------------------------------------------------------- As I have mentioned earlier, usually when I ride, I write. In fact, I ride so that I have something to write. But since this time, we had 30 people altogether riding into the Rann of Kutch, I am sure there will be a lot of writeups on the ride (some of them repetitive :-)). So I decided to do something different. I am making a list of all the tidbits I gathered during the ride -- all the learnings I had during this ride. This is not a travelog. It is more of an info-base. Hope that it is as useful and enriching as the ride itself. --------------------------------------------------------------------- - The Rann of Kutch is in 2 parts - Greater Rann and Little Rann. Greater Rann is 8,500 sq km and Little Rann is 5,500 sq km. - The Greater Rann is more towards northwest, closer to border towards Pakistan. The border is guarded by BSF in most parts. This Rann is also...

After a whole day of fire-fighting, I think it is apt that I take some time off and write down memoirs of my recent bike ride to Nainital. Read it slowly... like you have coffee on a rainy day, one sip at a time. It was one crazy moment when the three of us decided that next weekend is when we will take up this ambitious (rather, utterly idiotic) plan of biking down to Nainital. We leave the Noida office on 20th July 2002 after our graveyard shift, which gets over by 6:00am. The road till Hapud (51 km) is quite decent, 2-lane highway. From Hapud to Moradabad is rather bad, since it is just one-lane and the trucks take your happiness away. Moradabad has a fresh bypass now, which is unbelievably good,so good that u feel like u are in firang-land. 7-8 km of straight road, with no traffic at all. We ride at our respective bikes' top speed. We stop at a dhaba after Moradabad, eat Aloo paratha and rest a while. It is about 10:00am and quite cloudy. We take to road in a while and reach a ...