How it all began!!!!!!

Sometime in Nov-Dec 2004...

As far as I can recall this trip was the very first in the whole list of my crazy trips....

I was in Bangalore those days. It was a Saturday evening and we had no plans!!! Me and Anshul were at home we had been getting bored the whole day/evening. Around 9-9.30 pm, we were hungry and Anshul asked me, "Khane ka kya karna hai???". I was like "main yeh normal kahin khane nahi jaa raha... thodi door drive karke khane chalna hai to chal." There was this one restaurant some 15-18 kms from home, on the outer ring road, and I suggested that to Anshul. But Anshul was not interested in that place!!! Roughly the following conversation happened after that.

Anshul: ek jagah bolun, wahan chalega??
Me: Haan bol..
Anshul: nahi chor.... tu nahi chalega...
Me: Arre bol to kahan...
Anshul: Mysore chalein????
Me: (kinda surprised) abhi!!!!???
Anshul: haan...
Me: Chal!!!!!!!

So we quickly packed up a bit and around 10 pm we started from Bannerghata road on my Pulsar. Once we were outside bangalore, we stopped for dinner at some road side shop near a college. The food was decent and we were back on the road soon.

Around 12 in the night, we were near the halfway mark, when the cops stopped us!!! They asked us where were we going at such a time and when we told them that we are headed to Mysore, they were like are you crazy!!! They told us that this area is not safe in night, and that night was coincidently the night of a local festival in Karnataka, when people gamble and get drunk and kinda go insane. So the cops were trying to convince us that specially on that night, people being in such a condition can stop you and loot you. After may be 10 mins of discussion, we told them we will stay at the next hotel we find and continue in the morning. (But we had no such intentions :D :D).

We kept on moving and safely reached Mysore City around 1-1.30 am. But Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost!!!! We had to go to the Infy campus in Mysore and that was 10-15 kms outside the city. We asked for the way to Infy campus and all the people scared us like anything and told us not to go at that time in the night. This time we really got scared and were actually thinking of checking into a hotel. But then both of thought "sala jo hoga dekha jayega!!! Yahan tak aa gaye hain pange leke to ab to jayenge hi!!!!" So we decided to go ahead. Anshul was wearing a jacket, which had a zipper where the hood can be rolled and packed in. We took almost all our money from our wallets and hid it in that zipper!!!! Then we decided that if anybody tried to stop us, we will not stop!!! We asked for the directions (which were not really straight forward), memorized whatever we could and started again.

Halfway from the Mysore City to the Infy campus, we saw a man coming towards us, with a torch in hand, trying to stop us!!!!! Scared!!!! As already discussed, we decided not to stop and opened the throttle and just zapped across him. On passing him we realized, it was a cop!!!! And just after this thing happened, there was a fork on the road which nobody in the city had mentioned about!!!!! Not sure which way to take, we came back to the cop. When we told him that we work in Infy, he became supportive and gave us the directions. Finally reached the campus. :) Happy, relieved and tired, we met our friend and hit the bed around 3.

In the morning, after taking a tour of the Infy campus we were ready to hit the road at 11 am. We asked about the places to visit in Mysore, and our friend told us about 4 places. Mysore Palace, Chamundi Hills, some temple and Brindavan Gardens. What he didn't tell was the relative locations of these places!!!!! So we planned to visit the hills, then the temple, then Gardens and then the Palace. It turned out to be the longest possible route to cover these places!!!! Anyways by around 4.30-5 we were done with all these places and thinking that all the excitement is over, we hit the road to Bangalore.

But there was more excitement in stores for this trip!!!! We had hardly covered 15-20 kms from Mysore, when it started raining heavily accompanied by very strong winds. There was a petrol pump near by, we went there to get some shelter from the rain. I parked the bike on the side stand (which makes my bike tilted at quite an angle). The winds were so strong that my bike was thrown on the other side by the wind!!!!! We just couldn't believe that!!! I mean the bike was on the side stand tilted towards one side, and it fell on the other side!!!! In the accident, the rear view mirror also crashed.

We waited for some time. The rain and wind slowed down a bit. It was getting late and we had no other option, so resumed our journey in the rain. So practically the whole distance from Mysore to Bangalore was covered in rain, that too on a highway which was under construction, so after every couple of kms, you were on different sides of the median.

Finally reached home at around 10 pm after covering 400 adventurous kms in exactly 24 hours.