A normal Friday late evening and I suddenly decide to go on a bike trip next morning. Asked my friend Manas if he wants to join, and he is interested but the problem is that his bike was not at all in a condition to go for a long trip. Nitesh agrees to give his bike for the trip. After discussing a few options, Lansdowne is decided as the destination. We decide to leave early in the morning and go to bed without any further preparations. The bikes have not been serviced in a while, but its too late to think about that and we decide to the trip on 'as is' basis.
Considering the kind of lazy bums both me and Manas are, we surprisingly started as per plan and left Gurgaon by 6 in the morning. :) The weather was just perfect for a bike ride. The air was so clean, the roads were empty and it was pleasantly cold. Just perfect!! We reached reached Meerut around 8.15 am and stopped just outside Meerut for breakfast. Garma-garam Chai and Paneer ke pakode :D Couldn't have asked for a better breakfast at that time.
After breakfast, when we were about to resume our ride, we realized that Manas' bike has a flat tyre!!!!! Luckily the puncture shop was just besides the dhaba and we got it fixed. So the breakfast break lasted for a good full hour. Our next break was when we crossed Ganges, just before Bijnor. Had a nice chat with the gaurds at the chowki at the bridge.
Once we crossed Ganges, the scenery totally changed. The highway became a 2 lane road with greenery on both sides. One of the best roads I had ever seen in Uttar Pradesh.!!! We reached Kotdwara at 1 in the afternoon and since our destination was just 40 kms away, we decided to visit Manas' cousin in Kotdwara and had an awesome lunch at their place.
We got back on the road around 3.30 pm and man as soon as we were in the mountains, what a sight it was. Sexy weather, all green green green and green all around, and narrow winding roads in between all the greenery. :) Just awesome.
Somewhere on our way, we suddenly got surrounded by clouds/fog!! It started drizzling a little bit and the roads got wet. This made the sight even better. Perfect setting when anybody will want to be on a bike. :)
After a lot of "photo breaks", we reached Lansdowne at 6.00 PM, barely in time to visit the couple of "tourist spots". So after taking a couple of rounds of the town, we headed towards a famous "View Point". We were on bikes and were not afraid of a little off-roading, so while trying to take the bike as close to the view point as possible, we by mistake entered a trail, which was not really meant for bikes!!! It was just kind of a hiking trail where even 2 people can't walk side by side without touching each other. But once we were in there was no way to turn back or pull the bikes back!!!! So we kept on going deeper hoping at some place we will get a place to turn the bikes. We slowly reached the view point and luckily there was enough space to turn the bikes at the end of the trail!!
Once back from the view point, we checked into a hotel. That night was the night of "Lansdowne Mahotsav", a yearly fest in Lansdowne. So the evening was spent on the main chowk. The whole Lansdowne was out there. Sometime in the night, we were discussing the trip and realized that the bike ride from Gurgaon to Lansdowne was quite simple. So if we start for Gurgaon in the morning, our trip will end too soon. So we decided to explore more before heading back and started asking people for the options. We soon figured out that Rishikesh is roughly 100 kms from Lansdowne and the route is also quite sceninc. Sounded perfect to us. :)
Next morning we asked for directions towards Rishikesh and started our ride at 10 trying to travel the "scenic route". For the first 30 kms or so, the ride was awesome. The weather was great, the roads were narrow and winding, no traffic at all, the views were superb, overall, the perfect setting that bikers want. :) We were going slow and enjoying the ride, taking a lot of photo breaks...
We came for this trip looking for adventure and we soon encountered some!!! The road we were travelling on, soon turned out to be just a "road on papers". It was a proposed road which was still not tarred. So here we were, 2 bikers, travelling down hill, on loose gravel and mind it, the road had hair pin turns as well!!!!! We were shit scared but kept on moving, didn't really had any other choice. The max speed we were able to touch was 20kmph in that stretch and it took us almost 4 hours to cover those 40 odd kms!!!!! The only vehicles which crossed us were 2 jeeps, one in either direction and I guess we crossed 2 small villages on this road. Hats Off to Pulsar, for crossing this patch safely without any problems!!!!! If we had had a flat tire on this stretch, I really don't know how could we have managed to get out of that place with our bikes!!
We finally reached Rishikesh at 4 in the evening, 6 hrs after we had started!!! Quite relieved to reach there safely, we relaxed a bit. We were running quite late, so took a quick dip in the Ganges and had a quick Lunch after that!!! The journey was taxing and we were kinda tired by now, but we still had almost 300 kms to go!!! So we wrapped up our stay in Rishikesh quickly and were again on the road around 5.30. Rest of the journey was uneventful. We had our dinner at a dhabba just before entering Meerut around 10.30 PM. We entered Delhi around 12.30 AM. Were almost dead by then. Took a break on the footpath, before we could gather energy for the last leg of the journey till Gurgaon. Finally we reached back Gurgaon around 2.15 AM. DEAD TIRED!!!
But it was an awesome experience. That day we had been riding from 10 in the morning till 2.15 in the night. And in the 2 days we had covered around 685 kms!!!
