Memoirs of a Wandering Nomad

Travel date: Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 May 2007 Distance: 250km from Gurgaon Route: Gurgaon - Jaipur Highway (N8) till Dharuheda - Right towards Rewari Rewari to Narnaul - Singhana - Chidawa - Jhunjhunu - Mandawa Leave Gurgaon 3:30pm.Gurgaon to Dharuheda via NH8. Take right after crossing Dharuheda towards Rewari. Cross through Rewari. Little town with weird architecture. Take right from Ambedkar chowk for Narnaul. Rewari - Narnaul about 60km. Good road. Narnaul - a small sleepy hospital town. Well-connected.Just some km before Narnaul, a road goes to Behror (30km) in case you want to open to the highway.Otherwise the roads hereafter lead to deeper and deeper interiors. Cross Narnaul and head to Singhana (35km).Home of all Singhanias. See Singhania school, Singhania college etc. Singhana is on the border of Haryana and Rajasthan.The moment you enter Rajasthan, bad and patchy roads start.Singhana to Chirawa (pronounced Chidawaa - 25km) is bad, patchy, like an old mattress. Chirawa is a ...

The other day Alok called and complained that I have not written anything about our rides together. Now although I explained to him that this is because of a slight technical hitch that he is in Mumbai and I am in Delhi these days and so we have not done rides together lately, I think it is apt that I post some of my earlier published posts for the record and for the sake of the biking partnership we have. This one is about our ride through Tamhini Ghat and was posted on Royal Enfield's site sometime in January 2005 as "Tamhini Ghat -- Absolutely Stunning Rear Gem of Western Ghats". These RE guys try to make a big deal of everything. ;) Cheers, S ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mumbai-Pune via Tamhini Ghat - Shreekant Vijaykar Date: 18 and 19 Dec 2004 Route: Mumbai - Panvel - Pen [NH-17] - Kolad - Vile - Bhagad [SH-60] - Bhira [Tamhini G...

This is one of my old writeups - from the archieves that is. I think I had first appeared in the March of 2005 on the 60kph site / bulletin board. Anyway, the reason I am posting this today again is to keep the momentum going. I cannot bang my head today and come up with some new stuff, so here is some old wine in -- well, old bottle. Cheers, S ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Speaking of time, I must also thank the ride to Rann of Kutch, for it provided me enough time with myself. Moreover, the settings of yellow sand and blue skies all around you are perfect for meditations on life, universe and other very essential questions like the nature of being, knight templers and cheese omlettes. Anyway, in all these and other random ponderings, I also rambled to myself about the name I should give my 500cc. It is more than a dozen times that people have aske...

I am increasingly getting inspired by the great mastermind of Scott Adams -- not with his political views about the American elections or his viewpoints on free will (and how he and Albert Einstein are in the same league when it comes to that) ... These are all incidental. What I am getting increasingly inspired by, is his ability to write a post every freaking day, over and over and over again. I mean, look at it, how does one find a topic to write on every day? I write only when I am back from a bike ride. But then, suddenly an alarming thought strikes me today. And the thought is this -- Am I getting limited by my physical and practical ability of bike rides and travels? If that is the case, then it is an influence I need to break. Else, what will soon happen is that if I need to think of anything new, I will need to hop onto the bike and start riding. Which is great, only may not be practical always. So here is a post for no particular reason really. I am not riding today, although...

There is something about the Moradabad bypass road. Every time I have crossed this 7km stretch, something wonderfully exciting has happened with me. Most of the times, I have crossed it on a motorbike, and so I have written about the overall journey in some post or the other. Like my trips to Nainital, Saat tal, and the other parts of Kumaon. But I think this stretch needs a special mention too. Which is the subject of this post. Like the very first time I crossed it was on a 100cc Hero Honda Splendor, about 8-year old machine, very badly maintained (all my machines are badly maintained, but run superbly). This was the third bike ride of my life - the first being Mumbai to Mahabaleshwar via the Mumbai-Goa road (same bike), with a pillion; and the other being the more common Delhi - Agra route (again, same bike). I was of the opinion, and I still carry the same to a certain extent, that the machine does not matter much. It is the rider and his style that matters more. So here I am, ridi...

Serendipity KALAKHO – ABHANERI – BHANDAREJ – DHAUSA – BHANGARH - MADHOGARH The famous vocabulary book by Nurnberg and Rosenblum defines ‘Serendipity’ as ‘lucky discovery’ – ‘lucky’, ‘chance’, ‘unexpected’ … It also says that the word is lovely. Agreed, especially after this serendipitous travel in the center of Rajasthan. The month of December is marked with a host of long weekends in the year 2006. Shame that I spend most of those in the city. After a while, the feeling gets too overbearing and the call of the wild raise above the din of the metropolis. The Christmas weekend finally does it. I pack a small bag, throw it in the trunk and move out of the city. We have bought this book called Weekend Gateways, by Outlook, and a friend has gifted me a small traditional compass for the Christmas. Armed with these two new possessions and a desire to put them to immediate use, we drive in the moist foggy morning of 23rd December by about 9am into the unknown. Day 1 – December 23, 2006...

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...